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

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

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

But if it's not reported again, Serif won't know that another user is affected, and may not set/adjust the priority appropriately.

[debraspicher]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

But if it's not reported again, Serif won't know that another user is affected, and may not set/adjust the priority appropriately.

Yes, that's why I suggested to keep bumping the tracker. Basically, no sense in having to search the forums, having to do investigations twice.

[loukash]

9 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

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.

I agree with this.

Just the other day I tried various forum search options to return a list of "afd" (or "afp"/"afb") keywords.
Couldn't find a way to make it work.

[debraspicher]

Hear us out, staff, but this could also save you time as well. Just this month, @SrPx and I were working out what was causing some issue. Only to find out after the fact it had already been fixed without our knowledge. Needless to say, that didn't help to encourage further feedback efforts. That was a substantial post for me as well compared to average, and though not their fault at all that we were unaware, I have used the forum less and less overtime in this fashion because I'm not sure what is actually needing reproducing and if any of the issues we spend time looking into are even being considered in the bigger list. So while a listing of bugs wouldn't need to make their priorities transparent, and I don't expect this, but obviously having several a few bugs akin to "Causes NVIDIA cards to blue screen" would be more imperative to fix than "this blinks red on hover and is confusing". Seeing a growing list of "resolved" bugs (with dates!!) can give us an idea... like OK, I'll offer to tackle these bugs here since I can see they're focusing on UI increasingly (as an example).

@Patrick Connor does a wonderful job of putting together change logs after each update, but shifting efforts to a more complete listing and having a graveyard of decimated bugs is so much more appealing to the end user when it is all in one place and depicts progress we can measure.

Just a thought.

[Alfred]

20 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

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.

Furthermore, QA/Support staff can and do add bug-tracking issue numbers as topic tags for the forums threads where those bugs are reported and discussed, making it possible to do a tag search to find related threads.

[fde101]

2 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Furthermore, QA/Support staff can and do add bug-tracking issue numbers as topic tags for the forums threads where those bugs are reported and discussed, making it possible to do a tag search to find related threads.

Yes, I think the simplest way to meet this desire to make it easier to identify corrected bugs would be if Serif would also list those tags in the change list they provide with each release - instead of "fixed bug which was..." they could list "AFD-...: fixed bug which was..." and give us something to match up to the various threads discussing these concerns.

[Corgi]

3 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Yes, I think the simplest way to meet this desire to make it easier to identify corrected bugs would be if Serif would also list those tags in the change list they provide with each release - instead of "fixed bug which was..." they could list "AFD-...: fixed bug which was..." and give us something to match up to the various threads discussing these concerns.

Yes, this would be a good thing. It wouldn't be a substitute for a simple-to-view-and-search bug list (and to which you could signify your interest in having Serif solve the bug), but it would be a step in the right direction.

It would also help if they could consolidate or link the bug report numbers such that if a bug affects multiple apps, it either shares the same report number, or displays the unique bug number in the other apps. That way you'd be able to determine right away whether the same bug you're looking at exists in other apps.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, loukash said:

Just the other day I tried various forum search options to return a list of "afd" (or "afp"/"afb") keywords.
Couldn't find a way to make it work.

https://www.google.com/search?q=afd+site:forum.affinity.serif.com

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

https://www.google.com/search?q=afd+site:forum.affinity.serif.com

Or perhaps instead of just AFD (etc) on this site, you could try searching for

"tags=AFD" site:forum.affinity.serif.com

[loukash]

9 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

google.com/search?q=afd+site:forum.affinity.serif.com

Yeah, I know. But I won't let Schgoogle make profit from me – or from anyone else for that matter – anymore.  
Schgoogle is not our friend. We're just their commodity.

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, Corgi said:

I think @debraspicher wasn't talking about a Bugzilla-type system

 

4 hours ago, debraspicher said:

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,

Did you notice which sentence I responded to? Just to be sure, I'll remind you: "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."

The point is that "always", no matter what the tracking system is, even the aforementioned Excel table, if it has tens of thousands of records and you don't know what to look for (you don't know how someone described what is happening to you), then it will still be a search by using some magical keywords, and hope to happen upon the right topic.

[debraspicher]

32 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

 

Did you notice which sentence I responded to? Just to be sure, I'll remind you: "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."

The point is that "always", no matter what the tracking system is, even the aforementioned Excel table, if it has tens of thousands of records and you don't know what to look for (you don't know how someone described what is happening to you), then it will still be a search by using some magical keywords, and hope to happen upon the right topic.

Eh. No thanks. When I read this kind of response, I've already checked out. Moving to block list, so no need to respond.

[CM0]

Forums are completely inadequate for tracking issues. @Greg T Described very well the issues and the potential improvements. I've worked for several fortune 100 development organizations and forums could never provide the information and communication needed to have the best relationship with users in regards to properly addressing and prioritizing issues and concerns. There is a reason tracking software was created and it wasn't so that a dev team or mods could just duplicate work attempting to sync from a forum to a backend system. Most tracking software allows separate public and private views so that this is not required. One tool can provide public information while also providing private information for the dev team.