Create a comprehensive bug tracking system - your current forum bug reporting system is a mess! Maybe try MantisBT open source bug tracking system?

[Greg T]

I've seen your current bug reporting forums and it's a total mess.  How in the world do you find any old bugs to fix them throughout all the people reporting them?  It's totally chaos.  No wonder you can't fix any reported bugs, the bug reporting forums is a complete mess.

Your company needs to build a bug tracking system similar to Github's issue tracker, where you can assign Assignees, Labels (like bug, duplicate, enhancement, question, won't fix), Milestones, Development Branch, etc.) , etc.

An effective tracking system, similar to the issue tracker feature on Github, would greatly enhance customer relations by providing a clear and efficient method for identifying and resolving issues.

Top 5 reasons for a issue tracker:

1. Improved customer satisfaction: With a comprehensive bug tracking system, customers can quickly and easily report issues, and track the progress of their resolution, leading to improved satisfaction and customer loyalty.

2. Increased efficiency: A bug tracking system allows for better organization and prioritization of issues, enabling staff to quickly address and resolve the most critical problems.

3. Increased transparency: A bug tracking system provides a clear and visible record of all reported issues and their status, allowing for greater transparency in the issue resolution process.

4. Improved collaboration: A bug tracking system allows for easy collaboration among staff and customers, enabling them to share information and work together to resolve issues more efficiently.

5. Better decision-making: A bug tracking system provides data on the number and types of issues being reported, which can be used to make informed decisions about product development and improvements.

 

I recommend you use something like MantisBT. https://www.mantisbt.org/index.php

Open source on Github: https://github.com/mantisbt/mantisbt

From their website: "MantisBT is a popular open source web-based bug tracking system. Built on PHP and supports Linux, Windows and macOS on the server side. Compatible with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and IE 10+. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). "

There, I saved you time and money!

[Greg T]

5 minutes ago, N.P.M. said:

Bug tracking is an inhouse subject and I think Serif uses Jira for this.
 

A person like myself just sees a messy bug forum.  It really shows professionalism.

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, Greg T said:

A person like myself just sees a messy bug forum.

The tracking is not done via that forum, as N.P.M mentioned. And they probably do not want an externally visible bug tracking system, anyway. Most commercial vendors don't let their users see that, in my experience.

[Greg T]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

The tracking is not done via that forum, as N.P.M mentioned. And they probably do not want an externally visible bug tracking system, anyway. Most commercial vendors don't let their users see that, in my experience.

At least I'm able to use the bug tracking system via Embarcadero Technologies's own bug tracking system.  They do have a professionally created bug tracking system that license owners can access and interact with and use.  It's not a public bug tracking manager, but at least license owners can login and use it.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Greg T said:

It's not a public bug tracking manager, but at least license owners can login and use it.

Again, I'm not sure that Serif wants their users to be able to do that.

[Greg T]

25 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Again, I'm not sure that Serif wants their users to be able to do that.

By not providing a bug tracking system that license holders can login to, the Serif company may be perceived as lacking transparency and trust. Customers may feel that the company is not responsive to their issues and that their concerns are not being addressed in a timely manner. Furthermore, a bug tracking system also allows for better organization and prioritization of issues, enabling staff to quickly address and resolve the most critical problems. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as improved efficiency and collaboration within the company. Additionally, a bug tracking system can provide valuable data on the number and types of issues being reported, which can be used to make informed decisions about product development and improvements. Overall, the lack of a bug tracking system can lead to a negative customer experience and impede the company's ability to improve its products and services.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, Greg T said:

Furthermore, a bug tracking system also allows for better organization and prioritization of issues, enabling staff to quickly address and resolve the most critical problems.

Staff can do that to their satisfaction using their internal tracking systems.

6 minutes ago, Greg T said:

Additionally, a bug tracking system can provide valuable data on the number and types of issues being reported, which can be used to make informed decisions about product development and improvements.

Again, their internal system can do that.

 

[Old Bruce]

On 1/14/2023 at 7:57 AM, Greg T said:

At least I'm able to use the bug tracking system via Embarcadero Technologies's own bug tracking system. 

1600+ dollars a year is a different kettle of fish.

[loukash]

On 1/14/2023 at 5:26 PM, Greg T said:

not providing a bug tracking system that license holders can login to

Having likely literally millions of "license holders", I can imagine that Serif doesn't even have the personnel resources to manage such a flood of "bug" reports from every hobbist designer. If you actually follow the bug report forums, you should have already noticed that not everything a user calls a "bug" is one: In way too many many instances, the bug sits in front of the computer display.  

[Corgi]

On 1/14/2023 at 10:35 AM, Greg T said:

I've seen your current bug reporting forums and it's a total mess. 

It's true that if Serif uses the forums to determine the priority of bug fixes, it's dysfunctional. People report bugs in a scattershot fashion across multiple forums, and there's no telling (by reading the forums) how many users are affected by a given bug. For example, there's no "I have this problem too" checkbox, so no way to gauge priorities. And as a user, there's no easy way to find out whether a particular bug has already been reported and logged by the developers ... you have to perform a search and then read through multiple topics to find a match and then moderator confirmation.

Scenario: you find a bug in Designer for Windows. You spend 10 minutes searching the forums, and find it reported in the Designer for Mac forum. Do you also need to continue searching in the Designer for Windows forum, and report it there if you can't find it? Should you also check to see if the bug exists in the corresponding iPad forum? Should you be a good sport and see if the bug exists in the Photo and Publisher apps, and create separate reports if they do? Should you add your voice to the bug report in the Designer for Mac forum, saying, "Yeah, I have this too, but on Windows" so that the bug gets higher visibility?

So I would agree that Serif could do much better by offering a way for users to reveal the bugs that are most impactful. But it doesn't need to be a full-blown bug tracker that shows the progress of each bug at every step. Although nice, that would be more than most commercial software vendors offer, and Serif is fairly tight-lipped to begin with. 

On 1/14/2023 at 11:35 AM, walt.farrell said:

Staff can do that to their satisfaction using their internal tracking systems.

Perhaps so, but is it to the users' satisfaction? I question that, given the number of posts that complain about various bugs existing for many years, and the number of bugs reported multiple times since there's no concise central repository.

7 minutes ago, loukash said:

Having likely literally millions of "license holders", I can imagine that Serif doesn't even have the personnel resources to manage such a flood of "bug" reports from every hobbist designer.

There needn't be any additional bug reports. Serif could just maintain a list of confirmed and logged bugs. As a user encounters a bug, he/she can check the list, and if it's on the list, click a button that says "I have this too." If it's not on the list, the user just posts on the forums as is done today.

[Old Bruce]

10 minutes ago, Corgi said:

find it reported in the Designer for Mac forum. Do you also need to continue searching in the Designer for Windows forum, and report it there if you can't find it?

Yes you should report the bug in the windows forum. If the search didn't show it coming up in Windows forums then it hasn't been reported yet. Or you could just chime in in the Mac bug report and say "This is in Windows as well".  Generally I search for bug reports and then add a comment saying "I too have this" to the most recent report.

10 minutes ago, Corgi said:

Should you also check to see if the bug exists in the corresponding iPad forum?

If you have found it in iPad as well as your windows then sure.

It comes down to balancing how much time you have and how serious are you about wanting the bug killed?

[walt.farrell]

7 minutes ago, Corgi said:

Perhaps so, but is it to the users' satisfaction? I question that, given the number of posts that complain about various bugs existing for many years, and the number of bugs reported multiple times since there's no concise central repository.

Bugs are reported multiple times even when they've been acknowledged, and even when they aren't really old. Looking at the bug forums here, there are many single-topic examples like:

• User 1 says "I have this problem..."
• The problem is discussed for a brief time and then
• A Moderator agrees it's a bug, logs it, and passes it to development. Perhaps even suggests a workaround.
• Multiple users continue to post "I have the same problem, what should I do?" at which point we have to suggest they look earlier to find the workaround.

Users are still going to report and repeat problems even if there's a different system.

And users are still going to be unhappy with the speed and/or priority that Serif chooses to fix the bugs. A different tracking system is not going to improve the speed or change the priorities, in my opinion.

[Corgi]

18 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

It comes down to balancing how much time you have and how serious are you about wanting the bug killed?

It also comes down to knowing whether Serif is aware of the bug already on various platforms, and whether it makes any difference if you chime in to say "I have this too," and whether Serif (or other forum users) actually want people chiming in when they also encounter the bug. It can get quite unruly if Serif wants everyone who encounters a bug to post about it in as many forums as appropriate.

Whereas if there was a central bug-reporting facility, it would [usually] save users time, and gives more info to Serif.

15 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Users are still going to report and repeat problems even if there's a different system.

And users are still going to be unhappy with the speed and/or priority that Serif chooses to fix the bugs. A different tracking system is not going to improve the speed or change the priorities, in my opinion.

I strongly agree with the first two [quoted] sentences. Inexperienced forum users might not know to check out the central repository, and the same bug might be repeatedly reported until it does show up in the repository. However, the number of bug report comments (in forum topics) will go down. And users will always be unhappy. 

Yet I strongly disagree with your last sentence. It is bound to help Serif prioritize if they have a good sense of how many users are bothered by bugs. It takes less effort for a user to click a few boxes than to create multiple forum posts, especially when it's not even clear if "I have it too!" posts are used by Serif to prioritize, or welcomed by users (p.s. I don't welcome them).

Serif clearly doesn't do a creditable job in identifying bugs all by themselves (witness the v2 rollout). So they desperately need user feedback on bugs. And it seems that the forums are the only vehicles for this right now.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Corgi
typos

[Old Bruce]

42 minutes ago, Corgi said:

it's not even clear if "I have it too!" posts are used by Serif to prioritize, or welcomed by users (p.s. I don't welcome them).

If I have a bug on Mac OS 11 and people running Mac OS 12 and 13 don't have it then that is useful data for fixing the bug. Same goes for the type of GPUs and whether or not the people with the bug are using a particular driver, be it for a printer or the GPU or whatever.

Ultimately the priority is set along the lines of this is affecting everyone on Windows would be a top priority and at the bottom would be it is affecting only Bruce with his old Wacom tablet on OS 11 with a particular Mac model.

[Corgi]

35 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Ultimately the priority is set along the lines of this is affecting everyone on Windows would be a top priority and at the bottom would be it is affecting only Bruce with his old Wacom tablet on OS 11 with a particular Mac model.

Yes, and the forums are presently a good place for Serif to understand the distinction between these two cases.

However, the forums are a poor place for Serif to understand the different gradations in between. And a lousy place for users to search for, track, and easily report bugs.

General comment: I think there is a lot of apologizing for Serif on these forums. I find it frustrating that in many cases, forum members support Serif by criticizing other members' ideas for improvements ... saying they're not necessary, won't work, are impractical, would cost Serif too much money/manpower, or aren't perfect and therefore aren't worth considering, etc. Sometimes these criticisms are valid, but often they just come across to me as defensive.

Serif does a lot right, and a lot well. But there are things that they could improve upon. I think it would be better for Serif employees to hear honest feedback and suggestions (and push back themselves, if they want), and not to have brainstorming discouraged so much in these forums.

[Greg T]

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

do you think that having an open bug tracker will lead to quicker bug fixes, and if so why?

If multiple people go to your room and leave items in it all over your room, later you come back to your room and you see tons of items all over the place.  How fast will you be able to find any one item?

If instead everyone put their items into categories, and organized where they put their items.  Wouldn't it be much faster to find those items?

Yes, bug fixing will be much faster because the information would be organized and you wouldn't have to spend a great majority of your time sorting and looking for relative bugs.  Good bug tracking tools will show you other bugs that are similar to the bug you are reporting so that you can also join in the discussion instead of creating a "new" bug.  I've heard Bugzilla is open source, free, and easy to use, although I've not tried that one.

If you spend the majority of your time "looking" for relative bugs in a forums, you spend less time doing the bug fixing.   You also will probably not find bugs that really matter, but instead find whatever is on top of your forums.  The real bugs may get buried in a mess of other newer posts.

I ran a War3Source TF2 server for several years.  I had a forums page.  I created one for gamers to put in what kind of races they would like me to create and I also had a bugs forum like Serif has going.  There has been many times that other newer posts would take priority over older posts, then I'll have users complain in the gaming servers about why I ignored their race or bug.  I eventually put up MantisBT and was able to get them to use it.  Then, my issues with the gamers went away because they could also see what I was currently working on and they could add new bugs and ideas to the list.  The list wouldn't get ignored anymore as all the unanswered posts would stay to the top of the list.

Overall, the less time spending looking for bugs is more time fixing bugs.  They might not "code" any faster, but they will have more time to do it.

[walt.farrell]

8 minutes ago, Greg T said:

If you spend the majority of your time "looking" for relative bugs in a forums, you spend less time doing the bug fixing.   You also will probably not find bugs that really matter, but instead find whatever is on top of your forums.  The real bugs may get buried in a mess of other newer posts.

The people's who are fixing the bugs are not looking for them in the forums. They are using the internal bug-tracking system, where the QA/Support team who monitor the forums have logged them.

[Corgi]

1 hour ago, LondonSquirrel said:

I did read your original post, but I still have some questions: do you think that having an open bug tracker will lead to quicker bug fixes, and if so why? What would your thoughts be if you open a bug, Serif notes that it is open, and then it sits there (maybe for years)? Because that is what some people complain about here in the forums from time to time, that longstanding issues are not fixed (I'm not talking about missing or wanted features).

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

I'm not sure I proposed an open bug tracking system (the OP did). Although it would be great to see Serif's internal planning and progress with bugs, I was suggesting a more modest idea of having Serif aggregate the bugs to create a more tractable way for users to search for bugs and indicate their interest in resolving the bugs they've encountered. With that more limited idea, users wouldn't see what was going on behind the scenes.

To answer your question: I think that neither an open bug tracker nor my lesser proposal would result in quicker bug fixes overall. But it would result in improved prioritization of bugs, such that the more impactful bugs would get fixed earlier, and the less impactful bugs would be resolved later (with a net result of fewer user complaints). I honestly don't know how Serif can prioritize given how busy and chaotic the forums are. Hopefully they're not succumbing to the extremely enticing strategy of fixing the easy-to-fix-but-less-important bugs first, and leaving the more impactful but harder-to-fix bugs for later.

And the other advantage goes to users who encounter a bug: it's easier to see whether Serif is aware of the bug, and easier to register interest in having the bug fixed. There are all sorts of features that could be helpful. For instance, if someone posts about a bug in a forum, and Serif confirms it, they could add a notice on the first page of the forum topic: This bug has been logged by development. The brief description of the bug is <description>, and it affects <products> of version(s) <versions.> See a complete list of logged bugs at <link to centralized bug list>, and, if this bug is affecting your workflow, you will have the opportunity to note that on the bug list>.

[fde101]

4 hours ago, Corgi said:

And it seems that the forums are the only vehicles for this right now.

Serif has a public email address for users to contact them with along with a presence on various [anti]social media platforms (ex Twitter and Facebook).  While the web site does push users to use the forums for reporting bugs, I suspect that Serif is likely consolidating bug reports from multiple sources and including them in their internal tracking system.

[loukash]

4 hours ago, Corgi said:

And it seems that the forums are the only vehicles for this right now.

If only there were ways to find out, huh.

Oh, wait.

affinity.serif.com/careers/technical-support-advisor

Quote

Responsibilities

• Monitor and provide outstanding technical support on all customer communication channels including support email addresses, forums, social media and other public platforms such as YouTube
• Investigate problems with installation, software usage and the support materials
• Test and check the user experience of support services such as websites, web services and portals. This includes working to test, address, resolve and communicate any issues
• When required, liaise with the Quality Assurance team to investigate, and report bugs and technical issues to the Development team
• Communicate with Corporate and Education customers as required to primarily help with installation and software usage, plus any other issues that may arise.

[debraspicher]

It's not necessarily relevant for my own purposes whether their bug tracker is open or closed as far as user reports. How they deal with reporting is up to them. However, I think having a small tracker/thread on the forums where we can see what is logged/being worked out/has been fixed would be welcome transparency and is not asking users to spend a whole lot of time, logging in, searching the forums doggedly to build up their own reports. It also gives users something to link to as far as "Hey, this is already logged". The only way to know "what is logged" right now is to search the forums and hope to happen upon the right topic using some magical keywords where staff may have responded.

If this were possible, I would peak at the log and see if anything is missing from it and ping staff (from my own reports). It brings attention without being time-consuming. Also, it's still a bit more organized as far as users deciding what threads are worth responding to, whether it is worth their time trying to reproduce a problem. Users could tag the tracker when the issue is logged and they can still link similar problems. It's not asking staff to deal with additional tracking of individualized submissions, which are generally duplicates anyway.

Whether they create the ability for users to submit reports individually is entirely up to Serif. However, if they could manage additional resources for that purpose, I would think the money in staff time would be better utilized hiring more testers or towards fixing years and years worth of bugs, if I'm being frank.

I'm not against it. I'm just pointing out some transparency that would actually be functionally awesome in the interim. I'm personally far less inclined to post bugs if I don't know what has already been reported.

[Pšenda]

15 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

The people's who are fixing the bugs are not looking for them in the forums.

An idea of how sw development works - i.e. a developer comes to work in the morning, makes a coffee, searches the bug report forum (from the latest report?, from the oldest?, randomly?), then picks a bug, and then she bangs on the keyboard all day and tries to fix it, she really excited me 🙂

[Pšenda]

14 hours ago, debraspicher said:

The only way to know "what is logged" right now is to search the forums and hope to happen upon the right topic using some magical keywords where staff may have responded.

And how else than by searching in tens of thousands of records (quite often duplicate, very often incorrect - because the user does not know or did not understand what and how it works) would you like to do that in that miracle system? If you actively use, for example, the aforementioned Bugzilla, it does nothing but searching for keywords and searching in the text of posts. Of course, it has classification into categories and components, but this can also be achieved by consistent use of Tags on the forum.

[Corgi]

16 hours ago, debraspicher said:

...However, I think having a small tracker/thread on the forums where we can see what is logged/being worked out/has been fixed would be welcome transparency and is not asking users to spend a whole lot of time, logging in, searching the forums doggedly to build up their own reports....

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

And how else than by searching in tens of thousands of records (quite often duplicate, very often incorrect - because the user does not know or did not understand what and how it works) would you like to do that in that miracle system? If you actively use, for example, the aforementioned Bugzilla, it does nothing but searching for keywords and searching in the text of posts....

I think @debraspicher wasn't talking about a Bugzilla-type system (see quote above), but something much easier to scan/search and use.

Just for means of illustration, when a new release of an Affinity product comes out, which of the following methods would you want to use to find out which bugs have now been resolved in the new version?

1. Install the program and test out each of the bugs to see if they still exist
2. Search through the forums for each bug to see if users or mods are reporting that the bug was solved
3. Scan down a list such as the one in this post:

Of course a list like this is not sufficient as a list of bugs, since for one thing the descriptions are vague. But the point is that there are better ways to search through bugs and determine their status than to scour forums.

[debraspicher]

1 hour ago, Pšenda said:

And how else than by searching in tens of thousands of records (quite often duplicate, very often incorrect - because the user does not know or did not understand what and how it works) would you like to do that in that miracle system? If you actively use, for example, the aforementioned Bugzilla, it does nothing but searching for keywords and searching in the text of posts. Of course, it has classification into categories and components, but this can also be achieved by consistent use of Tags on the forum.

I'm not 100% sure what you're referring to. Is this in regards to an external "official" bug tracker? I wasn't advocating anything like Bugzilla, Jira, etc. I was suggesting something more akin to an official listing of active bugs/status/progress on forum. So probably an official thread to make it easier on staff. However, I would certainly appreciate something a bit more informatively coordinated, say a spreadsheet, or spreadsheet-esk style listing. Shows date reported/added, whether it has been reproduced yet, status (fixed, awaiting fix, cannot reproduce, etc). Only verified bugs should make the list, but if they cannot find a way to reproduce, then this is helpful information. Whatever makes sense for Serif's purpose so I'm not necessarily advocating this is how the tracker should go. Just a thread that gives a better understanding of development's progress in the foreground and also, a tool we can use to track our own bugs.

I think having a road map is probably no-go. But, a list of bugs and seeing them get knocked back. That can really bring back a good feeling to the user-base as well as staff, also it would be really helpful for those taking the time to report a bug, to not have to report if what they see is already in the list. Saves time.