Welcome Beta Readers/Editors!

First off - thanks for volunteering as tributes to the 100th Hunger Games as Beta Readers and Editors for the SolarWinds Platform API eBook.

This is a new type of space (on THWACK), so there are going to be some hiccoughs on how we're organizing and managing this space. You could say I'm a "beta" tester for management of this space and you would not be wrong. I may "deputize" a few people to help manage this space, so if you see them in here, please be kind. Everyone here is volunteering their time and efforts.

Our mission, if you choose to accept it, is get the SWQL Overview chapter complete and ready for publishing.

Features of the the Beta Readers/Editors space:

Where you are now (the newsroom) will be where I and select others put "official" announcements. I put official in quotes, because unlike other SolarWinds blogs/newsrooms, this will mostly be handled by me and a few other internal people who are part of the program. To put it in layman's terms: things put here are non-canonical and should not be given any weight by the company.
There is a discussion area where everyone is free to post - and I highly encourage you to do so. It's one of the best ways to keep the conversations going.
I've added a "Feature Request" area for chapter and content ideas. I figured the best way to get everyone on board is to give them each a say on what goes into the book itself. I'm not, nor have I ever claimed to be, the be-all-end-all when it comes to the API or to technical writing. I'm sure there are chapters and/or ideas that I have missed, so this is a place where you can put in an idea and have the other beta members vote on it.
Lastly, I've added a "Gallery" for sharing stuff. This is where I'd like people to put anything they've decided should be included in the book - SWQL samples (please comment them well), screenshots (please redact where necessary), entire chapters, or other things. Currently I'm only going to allow certain file types in this area (to ease general management), but if you thing we need something else, please DM me via THWACK.

Right now, that's about it. I'm sure other things will come to me as I think about them.

Thanks to everyone who wants to be a part of this book being a success.

Oh! One last thing. At the parent level of this space, you should totally click the button in the right rail to "Bookmark this Group."

That way it appears in your THWACK-specific bookmarks under the Group pill.

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Beta Readers

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Beta Editors

Comments

stuartd

I learn something new about THWACK everyday and initially struggled to get "here".

There was no 'invite' so to speak, but instead I had to go to my profile page and scroll down to the groups section (which I've only just discovered as well), and then click the group name. It might be worth you amending your post here to advise those like me that floundered around a bit.

stuartd

Also, a question on HOW you want us to report on issues, and what sort of issues you want us to report on would be helpful.

Having opened the sample chapter and read the first two mini sections I can already see one minor spacing issue. But would you want us to post in here, or just markup the PDF and send that to you somewhere/somehow?

stuartd

So, I have had a read and I've got just 3 things for you, so may as well put them here:

p2 - change: beenleft to been left [i.e. insert a space between the words]
p21 - I really struggled with this one and was getting all sorts of errors trying to install the SwisPowerShell module.

I tried:
1. -Force
2. Uninstall-Module
3. Restart Powershell
4. other bits I now forget

Then one of the error messages suggested I couldn't update or uninstall this way as I'd installed it via another method, and I thought, was it the SDK. So grabbed the latest version of the SDK and suddenly everything is happy again with the latest version.

My point here being - it might be worth adding a note, that if they already have the SDK installed then the listed process will fail and to instead just grab the latest SDK and update that way.

p22 despite changing line 3 to our server I kept getting the following error:

Cannot bind argument to parameter 'SwisConnection' because it is null.
[from within Visual Code]

Get-SwisData: Cannot bind argument to parameter 'SwisConnection' because it is null.
[from the Powershell shell]

... and that's it for now