Navigating the Candy Wall of SAS Support Resources

When I was growing up, there were two kinds of Sundays: regular Sundays and George Sundays. George was the proprietor of a local Italian restaurant in my hometown and hosted the extended LaRusso clan for Sunday lunch every few weeks. His restaurant, appropriately named George’s, owns some of my favorite childhood memories – and some of my worst.

Every couple of months, my aunts, uncles, a baker’s dozen of cousins, and my immediate family members would take over George’s backroom and see if we could challenge the city’s noise ordinance. George would do nothing to discourage us, appearing every so often to fire balls of uncooked dough at us or ply us with more caffeine-laced sugary drinks, despite instructions to the contrary from our parents.

Invariably, though, an otherwise pleasant afternoon took a turn for the worse as we were leaving the restaurant. That was when my parents, thinking they were doing us a favor, would let us choose one item off George’s famous “candy wall.” You see, George didn’t stock just one or two different kinds of candy, he had dozens. Every different kind of chocolate bar, brand of gum, and flavor of jelly beans beckoned from George’s Candy Wall. For a 6 or 7-year-old kid, it was just too much. All these choices literally paralyzed me. Ten minutes of indecisiveness and several ultimatums later my parents would usher me out of the restaurant, usually empty-handed and crying. Even on the rare occasions when I did settle on something, I spent the rest of the afternoon lamenting my decision, thinking I left behind something that I would have enjoyed more.

When it comes to the multitude of great support and learning resources we offer new users of SAS, I often wonder if it can feel like you’re staring at George’s Candy Wall as well. While support.sas.com remains the holy grail of SAS customer support, there are so many good choices, it can sometimes be hard to know where to start. That’s why we’ve put together a new resource to make things easier for new SAS users: the SAS Starter Kit.

Need help navigating SAS Support Resources? Here’s your guide

The SAS Starter Kit is the perfect place for SAS newbies to start, outlining the five essential steps to help you learn the basics, grow your skills and connect with other users from around the world.

Step 1 invites you to create a SAS profile. A profile provides you access to things like free, on-demand training, software downloads and access to our SAS Communities, where you can ask questions, get answers and connect with SAS experts from nearly every industry and around the world.

Step 2 is your SAS Resource Cheat Sheet. It's your one stop listing of all the SAS resources you’ll ever need. Add it to your web favorites or print it out and add a little color to your cube. Keep this one close; it provides quick, one-click access to some of SAS’ most helpful resources.

Step 3 is designed to expand your SAS knowledge. This step introduces you to a full menu of free tutorials to binge watch, a number of free e-courses for a deeper dive and a number of other learning resources from e-books to webinars and more.

Step 4 is the perfect resource if you’re completely new to SAS or just trying something new. Our New SAS User Community is a great place to get coding help, share ideas and best practices, or just lurk! Our SAS Communities have more than 200,000 members ready to help get you unstuck or share what they know.

Finally, Step 5 introduces you to product-specific resources to help develop your skills with your specific tools. Here you’ll find the latest product news, code samples, and step-by-step instructional resources to guide you through common tasks using your product of choice.

I hope you find the SAS Starter Kit a sweet addition to your SAS toolkit.

Five essential steps to getting started with SAS

Navigating the Candy Wall of SAS Support Resources was published on SAS Users.