Skip to main content

Getting help

Community help​

dbt is open source, and has a generous community behind it. Asking questions well contributes to the community by building our collective body of knowledge. By following these steps, you'll be more likely to receive help from another community member.

1. Try to solve your problem first before asking for help​

Search the existing documentation​

The docs site you're on is highly searchable, make sure to explore for the answer here as a first step. If you're new to dbt, try working through the quickstart guide first to get a firm foundation on the essential concepts.

Try to debug the issue yourself​

We have a handy guide on debugging errors to help out! This guide also helps explain why errors occur, and which docs you might need to search for help.

Search for answers using your favorite search engine​

We're committed to making more errors searchable, so it's worth checking if there's a solution already out there! Further, some errors related to installing dbt, the SQL in your models, or getting YAML right, are errors that are not-specific to dbt, so there may be other resources to cehck.

Experiment!​

If the question you have is "What happens when I do X", try doing X and see what happens! Assuming you have a solid dev environment set up, making mistakes in development won't affect your end users

2. Take a few minutes to formulate your question well​

Explaining the problems you are facing clearly will help others help you.

Include relevant details in your question​

Include exactly what's going wrong! When asking your question, you should:

  • Paste the error message or relevant code inside three backticks in your question, instead of sharing a screenshot
  • Include the version of dbt you're on (which you can check with dbt --version)
  • Let us know which warehouse you're using

Avoid generalizing your code​

While we understand that you may wish to generalize your problem, or that you may have sensitive information you wish to anonymize, often replacing references in SQL can result in invalid code that creates an error different to the one you're hitting. This makes it harder for us to understand your problem. Wherever possible, share the exact code that you're trying to run.

Let us know what you've already tried​

In general, people are much more willing to help when they know you've already given something your best shot!

Share the context of the problem you're trying to solve​

Sometimes you might hit a boundary of dbt because you're trying to use it in a way that doesn't align with the opinions we've built into dbt. By sharing the context of the problem you're trying to solve, we might be able to share insight into whether there's an alternative way to think about it.

3. Choose the right medium for your question​

We use a number of different mediums to share information

  • If your question is roughly "I've hit this error and am stuck", please ask it on the dbt Community Forum.
  • If you think you've found a bug, please report it on the relevant GitHub repo (e.g. dbt repo, dbt-utils repo)
  • If you are looking for an opinionated answer (e.g. "What's the best approach to X?", "Why is Y done this way?"), then, feel free to join our Slack community and ask it in the correct channel:
    • #advice-dbt-for-beginners: A great channel if you're getting started with dbt and want to understand how it works.
    • #advice-dbt-for-power-users: If you’re hitting an error in dbt that you don’t understand, let us know here.
    • #advice-data-modeling: This channel is most useful when wanting to ask questions about data model design, SQL patterns, and testing.
    • #dbt-suggestions: Got an idea for dbt? This is the place!
    • Other channels: We're adding new channels all the time — please take a moment to browse the channels to see if there is a better fit

Receiving dedicated support​

If you need dedicated support to build your dbt project, consider reaching out regarding professional services, or engaging one of our consulting partners.

dbt Training​

If you want to receive dbt training, check out our dbt Learn program.

dbt Cloud support​

Note: If you are a dbt Cloud user and need help with one of the following issues, please reach out to us by using the speech bubble (💬) in the dbt Cloud interface or at support@getdbt.com

  • Account setup (e.g. connection issues, repo connections)
  • Billing
  • Bug reports related to the web interface

As a rule of thumb, if you are using dbt Cloud, but your problem is related to code within your dbt project, then please follow the above process rather than reaching out to support.

0
Edit this page