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Improving bug reporting for Windows

We've kicked of requirements gathering for the next version of the beta bug reporting tool.  The current tool, the Microsoft Beta Client (MBC), does some things good.  But as with any software after you have time to look back at it there are things we could do much better.

People on the current Vista and Longhorn betas have had a few opportunities to tell us about what the next version should do, but other people, such as participants in the preview program, use it as well.  For those people, you are welcome to leave your comments here and we'll take them into account as we spec out the next version.

Paul

Published Friday, July 14, 2006 10:25 PM by Pauldon

Comments

# re: Improving bug reporting for Windows @ Saturday, July 15, 2006 2:09 PM

1)I am in the customer preview program for vista but am in a few betas on connect. If I submit feeback using the same passport/live id why can I NOT log into Connect and view my bug reports.

2) Link bug reports in vista to another connect bug report. There is a glitch with Windows update that reports a driver for my ATI Remote wonder (the same driver is posted on microsoft update on XP SP 2) I bugged it during the Microsoft Update 6 SP 1 beta it was never resolved and still exits in vista. not only is it not the corrct driver it makes the remote wonder cease to work in xp and has no effect in vista.

3) There is a glitch in the Beta client where when I use the manual update feature it tells me there is an update I follow the instructions to have it update the program restarts runs the setup again.(I see the msi progress bar) opens then if I run the updater again it tells me the same update is available. Bascially it creats a loop telling me the update is avaible.

4) Bundling the Microsoft download manager is a great idea.

5) Maybe have a microsoft technical chat where the beta testers can talk to you guys directly???

Connect ID- Typhoon87

Tom Stack

# re: Improving bug reporting for Windows @ Saturday, July 22, 2006 8:09 PM

I agree with points (4) and (5) of Tom's post

1) Maybe add a function where the client would download the latest event (chat) information, and give us an option to remind us via a popup when the chat is about to start
2) If that were done, it would be nice if the chat page were integrated in to the app. After all, a beta client should be the all-inclusive tool for testers, right?
3) Change the "Longhorn" references to say "Vista" :P
4) let the MBC maximize!
5) on Connect, a statistics page would be nice (showing total number of bugs we've submitted, and perhaps if you guys could give us a star rating of how good our report was, an average rating could be shown on this page, etc...)

That would make the MBC a much better tool, and more useful for testers, I think. Especially the reminder features. I get too many emails saying: "x chat is starting in 2 hours!", and checking when it was recieved, to find I got it 9 hours ago. If the MBC could download the schedule and remind me on my computer, it would be more useful.

Karl Wagner

# re: Improving bug reporting for Windows @ Thursday, August 24, 2006 1:59 AM

Just closing out this thread and making sure we get these enumerated in our requirements for the next version.

Tom:

for #1, the CPP bugs take a a different route to get processed because of the volume of people on that program.  We do not have that process configured to allow tracking.  In the future this will likely change.

#2 is a good idea and we're interested in doing this and allowing you to link bugs to an uploaded OCA report or Watson crash.

#3 This will be fixed in the new client.

#5 There are some community chats on Vista coming soon.

Razielim:

#1, this has crossed our mind or a feature similar to it.

#2, pretty cool, but might be a bit ambitious to get into the next release.

#3, yes, the issue we have currently is that *some* things depend on this as they are configured.  Additionally, Server is still codenamed "longhorn" and the beta client serves both.

#4 yes, this should be addressed in the next release.

#5 You are reading our mind!  We have started the work to do this already.

Thanks!

Pauldon

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