Ask and answer questions

Follow these publishing best practices when posting questions or answers in the Splunk Community.

How to ask a question

1. If you have a specific question about using, deploying, or troubleshooting a problem with Splunk, you should first search the Splunk Documentation. Then search the Splunk Community platform to see if a similar question to yours has already been posted.
2. If no one else has asked your question, navigate to https://community.splunk.com and click Ask a Question, next to the search bar.
3. The Subject of your question should be as clear as possible. What exactly are you asking for help with?
4. Select the most appropriate Board that your question relates to so it's categorized on the site properly.
5. Choose the pre-defined Label(s) that relate to your topic. If there isn't one that fits, choose "other".
6. In the body of your question, provide as much detailed info about your situation and environment as you can, taking care not to share any confidential data. Useful information includes:
   • The Splunk products and versions you're using
   • Whether or not you're using forwarders, and which types
   • Error messages you're seeing, and in which logs
   • Examples of the data you're indexing or searching (if relevant to your problem)
   • Configurations, sample regex, etc.
   • Prior research you have done and your desired result
   • Exact Splunk terminology

The text editor tools are your friend. Use the insert/edit code sample to properly format sample code, data, search strings, or conf file stanzas in a code box to render special characters properly.

Before posting your question, add any relevant tags to help with the searchability of your question.

Keep in mind that Splunk Answers is a community site, and response times to questions can vary widely. If you have a question that needs a prompt reply, consider asking it in the Splunk user groups Slack workspace. For more information about Splunk community chat, see Chat groups in Get Started with Splunk Community.

Resolving your post

After you receive an answer with a working solution to your question, resolve your post by clicking Accept as Solution directly below the answer that solved your problem. This makes it easier for other users with the same issue to find the solution when they search for answers on the site.

How to answer a question

Be thorough and explain why your solution answers the question. Educate the community on how to troubleshoot and solve the problem, rather than simply copying and pasting an answer.

Provide links

Make it easy for the reader to find what is needed and point them in the right direction from the start.

If your answer touches on a topic covered in the Splunk documentation or other helpful sites, you should add a reference link so users can explore more information on the subject.