How do you collect bug details from users/clients?

"Feature X doesn't work. Please fix!". As makers/creators, you probably know this sentence, right? If you're lucky you get a screenshot, … that shows nothing.

How do you get the details that you need in order to understand the issue and fix it (in case it is actually a bug)?

  • Tools for log management/analysis? (e.g. Loggly, …)
  • Tools for contextual bug insights? (e.g. Instabug, …)
  • Written communication? (e.g. eMail, GitHub issues, Jira, Chat, …)
  • Custom solution? (Can you share some details maybe?)
  • Nothing? (In this case: Why?)
Jess

I do not have a solid solution. For website, Made a little middleware hack that notifies me (via email) on a few fails. I still get contact form results or direct email that "got an error" that doesn't really clarify. For iOS, I've had one bug report via twitter (I think).

I'd love to hear what other people like to do.

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Stephan Arenswald Author

@jessachandler When I was still developing mobile apps (good old Windows Phone days :D), I had some kind of a one button solution that (when clicked by the user) packaged up everything (logs, system info, …) and send that package via eMail to me. This was a huge time saver.

I'm looking for something similar for websites now (doing more web development at the moment). I started to create a prototype to do that (collect logs, browser, arbitrary info from the website itself, …). In addition, you are able to capture screen casts. So I am able to get a full package (zip file) again with all the info that I need to solve bugs.

With my question, I'm just trying to figure out what other ways exist. Maybe some custom solution is not needed.

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Micah Iverson

I built a tool exactly for this: https://www.bugfeedr.com/

I didn't want a big "vote on features/bugs" type of service that all the other sites are like. I wanted a simple, embeddable or linkable submission form that I could add to all my different sites.

I also didn't want my users to have to create an account to simply file a bug.

I have this on all my sites and it works great, people are able to find it and will quite often submit feedback.

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Stephan Arenswald Author
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Stephan Arenswald Author

@micahiverson Just checked out your profile. You created a lot of very cool (and beautifully looking) tools. Wow!

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Micah Iverson

@sarensw Thank you for the nice comments!

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