How should I ask a question in the Forum if I want to receive useful answers?

You should have run a search engine search already, before you even consider to ask. To limit the search scope to this site add site:jazz.net behind the keywords.

Read the first 10 results. You'd be surprised how many questions answer themselves that way, plus you learn a lot by doing it. Refining: If doing so, just finding a bunch of similar questions, maybe several years old, not reading the information and post a new answer like "How did you solve this" to several of such questions is not really professional. It is not a good idea to do so. Rather read the information provided with the questions and create a new question if needed.

Questions, where the same two lines of text is pasted in to the subject and the question body drives away professional users on the forum, because it shows no effort and thought was spent in creating the question.

Questions with statements in the subject and no question in the body also drives away professional users in the forum for the same reason.

To create a good question follow these steps:

In the Subject, create a good subject that touches on the problem and really is a question.
In the question body,

• Clearly describe what you do or want to do, and what the problem/question is
  
• Explain why you want to do this and what you want to achieve with it - often problems are not problems in the tool, but knowing how to achieve certain goals; knowing what the intent is often directs to completely different answers
  
• Provide the tool name and the version of the tool you use
• If there are errors, provide the error message - before you ask the question, carefully read the error message, think about it and what it means and ideally check the application log files before asking a question
• If this is around setup, upgrade and the like, provide the information about the topology you use, the operating systems, their versions, the databases, their versions, the application servers and their versions; anything that might be special in your environment could be of interest
  
• If you use a UI, provide the information about which UI you use; browser, other client
  
• Use screen shots where possible. Please note, that you need 50 reputation on the forum to post images, if you don't yet have that reputation, you can upload the screen shots to some other site e.g. dropbox and put the link into the question.

Tag the question with the product name you are using. Choose one or two reasonable tags. If a tag is unfamiliar to you, don't choose it. E.g. Jazz-Foundation is a very popular tag that is used often but probably fits 2% of the cases where it is used. If there is no matching product name of the form rational-....... for your problem, consider to find another forum that deals with the product and question you have.

If you have questions about the API use extending (for Java API) or OSLC or REST for web based API as tag.
If you ask about JavaScript or how to modify work items use attribute-customization as tag.
If you have questions around agile methodologies use agile as tag. Don't use it just because you have the agile template deployed or because it is hip today.

API Code:
Don't just paste your code in a question and hope someone will remote debug your code. All the users here are professionals and have a day job that does not leave them the freedom to do this.

If you want to discuss code and have an error that shows with the code, carefully consider the error. Provide the error message and the line it occurs in addition to the code in the question. Looking into the log files before doing this, applies again. Make sure to point at the line that thows an error in your code, as only you can do that.
If you want to discuss code, you should be able to debug it. If you are not, get your debug environment up and running for the server and the client API. Run the snippets that come with the Plain Java Client Libraries and understand the basic structure for RTC automation using the Java API. Consider following this post about getting started using the API.
If you want to extend the server run the whole Rational Team Concert Extensions Workshop before you try anything yourself.

JavaScript:
Before you ask about Java Script related questions read the wiki information provided, especially the API for JavaScript section and carefully read the Process Enactment workshop lab 5. Ideally run the workshop.
Make yourself aware that the JavaScript API is limited and you can not get at all the information you might like. Learn how to debug Java Script where you can debug it.

If you follow these best practices the forum experience will greatly improve.

Thank you!

The Jazz Team.

Note on Extending:
Please be aware that extending the tools should not be taken lightly. It is expensive, takes skills, needs to be maintained, can have impact on performance and, in general user experience. Never do it because it can be done. There has to be a real business case in order to consider extending the tools. The fewer you extend, the better.

"Note on Extending: 
Please be aware that extending the tools should not be taken lightly. It is expensive, takes skills, needs to be maintained, can have impact on performance and, in general user experience. Never do it because it can be done. There has to be a real business case in order to consider extending the tools. The fewer you extend, the better."