Place for defects (aka bugs) rather than ideas

[SeanAdams]

Hi all,

@Joe_Makopointed out to me yesterday by a PM that the export & package tool for Alteryx has a known defect, where the nested macros (a macro inside a macro) don't export properly.

That set me thinking - what's the best way for the community to log defects, and I'm wondering if there's a place for a section on this forum for defect reports?   That would also make it easier for the Alteryx team to parse out defects (which folk like @Ned care very deeply about) from other types of posting.

This would have to be heavily curated though - in my experience, a large number of defects raised for systems I've managed over the years have not been defects, but actually users not understanding the tools - however these did give us very valuable insight into usability; training; etc.

So -  if we had a "Potential defects" section, and if the more senior members of the community had the ability to curate along with alterxy, we should be able to do something good here:

Curate actions needed:

- move some to "Ideas" if they are new functionality

- move some to one of the discussions thread if they are actually a usage question

- Escalate some to the technical leads at Alteryx

- the alteryx team could workflow them in the same way as the ideas but with an additional step of "replicatable example pending from user"

Let me know what you think?

[pgensler]

I would love to know where to file these bugs, especially on documentation pages like this when it says: "ERROR no internet connection"

https://help.alteryx.com/9.5/index.htm#boost/syntax_perl.html%3FTocPath%3DReference%7CBoost%7C_____3

[SeanAdams]

I can imagine the badges now for people who identify defects which are shown to be valid.   This is something that a lot of large companies are starting to actively reward (community identified defects) and it's common in the security world, so it may be worth including this here?

Sometimes, finding a defect in a product that you use often is a frustration - but if we do this right it will feel like a treasure hunt - people saying "Woohoo - I found one - hand over my cool badge" :-)

cc: @LeahK

[LeahK]

Thanks for the well thought out suggestion @SeanAdams. We do not have plans to introduce a separate area for potential defects at this time.  The best channel to communicate bugs is through support. There are also opportunities to test Beta features and we will communicate those opportunities through Community News.

[saubert]

@LeahK : The thing is support (which has gained in reactivity these last month) may gain some times if the users can see the known bugs.

The other thing is to to be transparent to users and to communicate openly about that : "See, we have now 40% less bug than previous year".

[Gopinaath]

There is already a label for bug in community ideas. when you post a community idea, make sure you include the label "bug" but I would imagine product bugs should be the domain of the designer ideas section not the community ideas (unless its a bug related to the operation of the community platform).

Maybe there should be a bug label for the designer ideas forum as well. That is not there at the moment. However, i think this is a topic of discussion for the designer ideas forum.