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Best repro steps. Ever

The worst thing for a dev to get is a bug with no easy repro steps. Invariably, what happens is the devs and tests exchange quite a few strongly-worded mails till the dev knows how exactly the tester hit the bug. The issue gets more complicated with LadyBug (MSDN Feedback) in the picture. The people who file bugs cannot always know what information would be required by the product team to analyze the issue so quite a few times we wind up asking questions like "What are the exact sequence of steps you did to hit this problem?".

So Jason K (I don't know who he is, but he would make an awesome SDET :-) ) went and made sure no such issues can arise with this bug in MSDN Feedback (http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/viewFeedback.aspx?feedbackid=0f2ad0c5-8583-43bf-9145-b8d6b85d950a). He attached a Flash video of not only how to repro the bug but also with explanatory text!

So if you want to file a bug which gets a quick response, learn from Jason :-)

Published Friday, August 26, 2005 6:46 PM by sriram

Comments

# re: Best repro steps. Ever

Friday, August 26, 2005 2:07 PM by Vurg
It would be nice if Microsoft can provide a Macromedia Captivate alternative for sending UI repros. About half of the repro steps in the msdn feedbacks are not accurate, incomplete, or just plain no idea what the user is trying to say kind of narrative.

# re: Best repro steps. Ever

Friday, August 26, 2005 2:21 PM by Joku
Cool. I didn't know about that program. Often it's just with the GUI bugs that if you restart VS then the problem is gone... and then comes back later

# re: Best repro steps. Ever

Friday, August 26, 2005 2:22 PM by SuperJason
Anyone have comments on what the best program to do this is?

Thanks!

# re: Best repro steps. Ever

Friday, August 26, 2005 2:32 PM by Phil Scott
Jason: I've used Macromedia Captivate (which was used to submit this bug report) and also Camtasia Studio. I actually used Camtasia Studio to submit a bug report in the past on a bug that was closed as "not-reproduced" a couple of times.

Captivate is pretty easy to use. To create that flash animation it would only be a matter of telling captivate to record, and that is what it would create for you.

# re: Best repro steps. Ever

Friday, August 26, 2005 3:11 PM by Austin
You could also use Microsoft's own Windows Media Encoder (free download) to make a WMA file screen capture of the repro steps. I'm using it internally for common helpdesk requests to provide videos of how to do it, instad of written instructions, that people can see on our intranet.

# re: Best repro steps. Ever

Friday, August 26, 2005 3:42 PM by Wacko
the nice thing about captivate is that it will show when you click, or when your typing, what windows pop-up and you can edit all that stuff it makes things very easy to show people.

# re: Best repro steps. Ever

Saturday, September 03, 2005 12:37 AM by Hardik
Hi sri,
come here from gretechn's blog.nice to see the blog from someone who work @MS IDC.ok some suggestion:-
1)can u pls change the applicant tracking system on india site to something similler@main site?
current system is very old and hard to nabigate :(
2)can u pls post some info on internship+job opportunity@MS+other details like interview process etc rather then posting code snippest?
regards,
Hardik

# Your Bugs Are Our Top Priority

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 1:24 PM by Noah Coad's Code

It's true. Believe it or not. When you submit a bug report on an MS product through http://connect.microsoft.com/

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