Ask Slashdot: How To Get Non-Developers To Send Meaningful Bug Reports? 360
DemonGenius writes "I'm in the midst of a major rollout of one of our primary internal applications at work and we have a beta version available for all the staff to use. The problem here is most of the staff don't know how to send reports meaningful enough to get us devs started on solving their problems without constant back and forth correspondence that wastes both developer time and theirs. Some common examples are: screenshots of the YSOD that don't include the page URL, scaled screenshots that are unreadable, the complaint that wants to be a bug report but is still just a complaint, etc. From the user's perspective, they just send an email, but that email registers in our tracking system. Any thoughts on how to get the non-devs sending us descriptive and/or meaningful reports? Does anyone here have an efficient and user-friendly bug tracking system/policy/standard at their workplace? How does it work?"
Re:Make it send data to you (Score:4, Funny)
Make your software send it...
I recommend call information, web history, and keystrokes. For more information check out carrieriq.com
Re:Make it send data to you (Score:2, Funny)
Make your software send it...
I recommend call information, web history, and keystrokes. For more information check out CarrierIQ [carrieriq.com]
(this time I'm logged in)
Re:Make it send data to you (Score:5, Funny)
Put 'report bug' as an option in the help menu. And make sure your bug-reporting mechanism is the best-tested portion of the entire piece of software.
Re:"Report Bug" clicky (Score:5, Funny)
Just make sure you ask a zillion questions about what version of video driver they have and if their path info is set correctly. You can never have too much information. Pop up long hexidecimal numbers numbers they have to enter, but can't copy or enter untill they close the popup. Make information that is only available to the developers mandatory.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:5, Funny)
> If it's a C++ app, then sure, having a built-in crash reporting mechanism shouldn't be that hard to build in
That's precisely what I do. The default exception handling routine sends an email to me with the app, version, username, machine id, error description, call stack, and any useful data that that I saw fit to include while coding. It has saved me mountains of pain over the years, and also fuels my reputation as the all-seeing eye.
I do much the same but include credit card information, mother's maiden name and social security number.