Meet the Hitchhikers Team: Alyssa Hubbard

I started at Yext in the Upward program, an 18-month Rotational Program across departments such as Operations and Product Strategy. Upon finishing the program, I joined the Hitchhikers team full-time, and it has been an exciting opportunity to build a platform to empower our community of Yext power users. I have been thrilled to be a part of Hitchhikers, working to develop the program early on from researching community development best practices to implementing gamification tactics. In my experience, a typical day doesn't exist in the world of Hitchhikers.

But on a given day, you might find me…

One exciting aspect of training new Hitchhikers for me is to see and understand different learning styles: for example, are you a visual learner? An auditory learner? A tactile learner? I've really discovered how we can expand the Hitchhikers learning experience to fit through different modalities. It's wonderful to see the leaderboard grow and add new users to our platform each day.

Every other week, our team meets to discuss one of our most important Admin tools — Solution Templates. Solution Templates are pre-built configurations that can be installed into an account (check out our Solution Templates module here). It's a crucial exercise for our team to think strategically about how a business or industry would utilize a template and structure these templates accordingly. With Solution Templates, we can deploy and spin up Answers experiences in just minutes. It's really like magic.

Currently, we are gearing up for our Fall Release. It's invigorating to see these new features and watch immediately how these innovations can enhance a client's experience. For example, with a new feature, I was able to create new Analytics reports for Answers queries with no Knowledge Graph results, allowing clients to optimize their search results quickly and effectively. Additionally, leading up to the release date, our team and I will continue to work to update our Hitchhikers site to include these new features — keep your eyes out for the Fall '20 Release!

I take time most days to answer posts from the community. The Hitchhikers Community is an incredible resource. The solutions I provide have improved my relationships both internally and externally at Yext while deepening my own understanding of the Yext platform. The Community motivates me to continually challenge myself to think outside the box about what we can achieve with Yext. Hitchhikers ask great questions and share innovative ideas. It is wonderful to learn from one another — just to give you an example, yesterday I learned how you can creatively modify your Handlebars file to make your entire Answers Card clickable. It's gratifying to combine contributing new ideas and solving problems which help our Hitchhiker community.

Being a hitchhiker is an innovative and dynamic day-to-day experience. It has been very fulfilling to be a part of the public launch of the Hitchhikers Program this year. I am excited for its new directions on the road ahead.