Thousands of developers rely on the Force.com discussion boards for help with code, projects, and connecting to the community. Hundreds of new users sign up every day. We’ve heard a lot of feedback from you about things you like and areas where we can improve. We’re listening, and I’m excited to announce some new features we’re adding to the Force.com discussion boards this week. You can get started using these new tools today!

Kudos – Kudos are an easy way for users to identify great posts, good questions, and helpful answers. You’ll start seeing kudos on each post on the Force.com discussion boards. To give a post kudos, just click the star. We’ll track those users who have received the most kudos on the discussion boards, and display them on a leaderboard. This is your way to reward other users for their community contributions, so be sure to award them when you see a great post!

Search Before Post – Now as you start to create a new topic on the discussion boards, a search will kick in to look for the words you’re using in your topic title and see if there’s a similar topic already posted. Perhaps your question has already been solved! This new feature will make it easy for you to identify relevant topics to review. 

Quick Reply – You’ll start to see a “quick reply” option when you’re reading a post on the discussion boards – this will allow you to write your response right there without having to navigate to a new screen. Now you can solve questions in half the time!

We’re excited about bringing you these new features and thank you for the valuable feedback you’ve given us. This is only the beginning of some exciting changes coming to the discussion boards. I welcome all your thoughts and ideas about how we can improve this resource to better serve you. Please send me a message on the discussion boards if you have any questions or ideas. This is just the beginning!