1

As the title probably gave away, we’re excited to announce that the new version of the much-loved Daily Challenge will soon be returning to the Spiceworks Community!

We have taken the opportunity to redesign the Daily Challenge, address concerns and feedback from the previous version, and establish a stronger foundation. This initial version is a work in progress and will not be feature-complete. More details on that are below.

What to expect.

We plan to launch the first iteration, which we will continue to build upon. This means that the basic features and functionality will be at the start. We have some fast-follows and longer-term plans, but we wanted to get this in your hands so you can enjoy it again, see how it performs, and share your thoughts and reactions.

Much like with the version on the legacy community platform, we plan to have a new IT-related question every weekday* (see below for why I put an asterisk on this one). The questions will cover various topics, from networking and cybersecurity to software development and cloud computing.

How to Participate.

This first iteration will only work for logged-in community members, including seeing that the feature exists. In the future, we plan on having ways to promote this to logged-out visitors.

We’ll cover this more when the feature is live, but here is a quick overview. Once you are logged in (and the feature is live), you will see that day’s Daily Challenge promoted on the Community Homepage / My Feed. You’ll be able to take the question then and there. Only after you’ve submitted your answer will you be able to access the associated topic.

So, what’s different?

If you did not participate in the Daily Challenge on the legacy community platform, this section may be less important to you. But if you did, pay attention, as this version will differ.

  • Everyone gets the same question. Our first change is that everyone will get the same question each day.
  • Meet Professor Capsaicin. You already know about SpiceRex and SpiceBot (and yes, SpiceDuck), but the Daily Challenge will be curated by a new face around here who will specialize in our educational content. Say hi to (and don’t forget to follow) @Professor-Capsaicin-Spiceworks :wave:
  • Topics are available to everyone when the question has been closed. As mentioned above, you can only access the associated topic once you’ve taken the active Daily Challenge question. This changes once the question is no longer active, and will be available to everyone to discuss.
  • The next Daily Challenge question is available at midnight UTC. Like many servers you manage, the Daily Challenge works on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This should improve leaderboard comparisons (when we get them) since I know various issues were caused by the differing availability of the Daily Challenge question. In the past, it tried calculating based on what the system thought your local time was. Now, we’re all using UTC.
  • We can have no-question weekdays. Some days affect our global Community, and with this new version, we do have the option not to have a Daily Challenge question for that day, so we won’t adversely affect anyone’s streak when it’s a significant reaching holiday or observation. This will be sparingly used as there are very few worldwide holidays, but this is a feature requested in the previous version of Daily Challenge. What holidays and observations would you like to see where there is no Daily Challenge question? Note, this is not a per-member setting, but this will affect everyone the same.
  • Leaderboards and Profile are “Coming Soon.” I purposefully did not put the ™ on that one, as these are fast-follow items. But since no one will have streaks when this launches, we decided to save this for shortly after the launch. We also have some exciting plans for leaderboards, where you can compare yourself based on various things, such as people you follow or who have the same job title.
  • Badges are also “Coming Soon.” Much like Leaderboards, bling for your profile (aka badges) for the new Daily Challenge will be added later (badges from the vintage platform still exist on your profile).

We can’t wait to see everyone jump back into the new Daily Challenge for friendly competition and knowledge sharing. So, get ready to flex those IT trivia muscles and join the fun! We will have a follow-up topic when this is released, but I would also recommend tracking this topic as we will also make sure to link to that announcement here.

If you have ideas for questions you’d like to see in the Daily Challenge, don’t hesitate to reach out to the team via community@spiceworks.com.

While I have your attention, I want to thank the Spiceworks Community for keeping the unofficial Daily Challenge going while the Spiceworks team has been working on this. Many members enjoy it, and we’re happy to see the Community keeping this alive. We’ve also learned so much from watching how members participate in it.

Last but not least, as we started testing this, we realized something is now visible to everyone when logged in (no, it is not the actual Daily Challenge question). Can you find it?

110 Spice ups
2

So excited for this, and to see how it compares to the daily quiz that @Josh-J-Spiceworks has been overseeing for a few months.

30 Spice ups
3

In some ways, I do feel like that may be a closer comparison. It has been really interesting (at least for me) to see the reception of the unofficial Daily Challenge. In fact, I think because of it, one of the options you’ll see is one along the lines of “I don’t know but excited to learn more.”

There are other synergies (oohhh, me using my fluffy words today) such as everyone having the same question, which usually causes a good conversation to occur.

I’m super excited about this returning, and it will be interesting (or “interesting,” hehe) to see the reception because it is not the vintage version of Daily Challenge. We also plan on one of the differences being here that it doesn’t stay in MVP/Beta status for years :smiley:

22 Spice ups
4

I might even miss @Josh-J-Spiceworks’ thing a bit. I liked that the commentary focused so much less on the question topic (“how could an IT professional not know that???”) and was more of a discussion around whatever Josh decided to ramble about that day. Very nice!

23 Spice ups
5

We are so back baby! LETS GO!

image
image1920×1080 115 KB
17 Spice ups
6

@Josh-J-Spiceworks is still going to be very much involved with the new official daily challenge, so you never know…

19 Spice ups
7

Nope, I see nothing new

6 Spice ups
8

Hint: Check your profile.

12 Spice ups
9

Found it!! :slight_smile:

15 Spice ups
10

Super happy this is coming back. I used to have problems logging in on my mobile but thats not true anymore, so my only comment is: No to holidays off. That was part of my streak… as I enjoyed it, and the Spark, regardless of fourth of july or british bank holidays. I still made sure in the morning to get on and read the spark and keep my streak alive.
And yes, thanks to the community for keep the Unofficial version going!

8 Spice ups
11

And there was much rejoicing (yaaaaaaaay) - Monty Python & the Holy Grail on Make a GIF

20 Spice ups
12

Neat! Was the Professor procured from a peck of purple peppers that Peter Piper picked perchance?

14 Spice ups
13

Cool!

image
image1736×307 44.6 KB
14 Spice ups
14

Happy to hear this news! I’ve very much been enjoying the Unofficial Daily “Bacon is always the right answer” Challenge, where everything is made up and the points don’t matter, but keeping score is nice too!

I’m glad we will all get the same question each day. While the randomized questions were nice in a way, we occasionally got questions that were no longer relevant, or that the answer was no longer correct for the current version of XYZ that the question dealt with. Discussions were disjointed as well, as I would sometimes want to reply to someone else’s comment, but theirs was five years ago, and, unless they subscribed to the topic, they’d never see my reply anyway.

Will SpiceHeads be submitting the questions as before?

The Holiday no-question days were good for me, but that’s because they mostly aligned with the US Holidays I get anyway. Maybe instead of skipping questions on holidays, questions on holidays could just be left open for 48 hours so you could “make up” the question the next day (thus taking two questions that next day). With the Unofficial question, we’ve been able to do that, and that would open the door for folks in other countries to have extra time on their holidays too. I guess some may argue that dilutes the streaks, as folks can maintain a streak despite missing days. And, of course, that would mean flagging holidays for several countries to allow for more time on those days, so it would make administration more complicated no doubt.

13 Spice ups
15

We won’t have a formal submission process at first, but if you email them to community@spiceworks.com, we’ll review those and add them to the queue. :slight_smile:
(If you email them from an address other than the one tied to your account, make sure you include your username in the email so I can give credit as well!)

Also, any questions that folks have PM’ed to me for my version (at least for the ones I haven’t used yet) I’ll likely reach out about having them added to the official queue as well.

10 Spice ups
16

One thing I look forward to each work day is the Daily Challenge.

13 Spice ups
17

kramer
yay can’t wait!

9 Spice ups
18

It’s going to be real and spectacular!

8 Spice ups
20

I’ve seriously been scare for a while, just haven’t been getting my mojo on the page, however, this might just be what I need to get things jumpstarted again :slight_smile:
image

7 Spice ups
21

Do we get to see the % of answers given to each question?
That way we can see if some questions are answered incorrectly the same way so we can do learning.

4 Spice ups