About Solutions

[CarolineS]

Here in the Meraki Community, each topic (sometimes called a "thread") can have one reply marked as the "Solution." This is for the reply that most completely answers the question. That reply is then displayed prominently, and the topic is marked with a checkmark, as shown below.

Solution display on a topic page

Why should I mark the solution?

Marking solutions is very valuable for future community members who stumble across the topic. Instead of having to wade through all of the replies, they'll be able to see the best reply right off the bat.

Also, authors appreciate having their replies marked as solutions because (a) it shows that their reply was valuable and (b) we are now including solutions in the Member of the Month calculation! 

Who can mark the solution?

The original poster of the topic can mark any reply as the solution. Additionally, a few specially-permissioned Meraki employees can mark solutions if we are quite certain that the original poster's question was answered.

How do I mark the solution?

Only the original topic author (or specially permissioned internal users) can mark the solution; this can be done via the "Accept as Solution" button.Accept as Solution button

Whoops, I marked the wrong answer as the solution!

You can unmark the solution with the "Not the Solution" option in the ⋮ menu in the upper-right corner of the reply.Unmarking a solution

Can I mark my own reply as the solution?

If you're the original poster of a thread, you can indeed mark your own reply as the solution. This should only be done if your reply actually solves the problem — e.g. you answered your own question offline, and returned to provide the community an update.

There are a few different replies that, together, solve my problem. Can I mark multiple solutions?

For now, we are limiting each topic to one solution. If we get a lot of requests to allow multiple solutions, we'll consider it!

Won't people game the system and mark their own replies as solutions a lot?

Maybe. If that becomes a problem, we'll address it.

I posted a topic that doesn't really need a "solution." Can I indicate that it shouldn't get one?

Some topics are simply for discussion or information sharing, and it doesn't really make sense to mark a "solution" in those cases. Unfortunately, there's no option to say that a particular topic doesn't require a solution (though I've made a feature request of our community platform vendor!). Instead, we can simply NOT mark any solutions for that topic.

It is possible to disable solutions for an entire board. I've done that here in the "Community Tips & Tricks" board, since most of the posts here fall into the "information sharing" category rather than the "Q&A" category.

Questions? Comments?

Please ask them by replying below!