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I have a fully configured mantis bug tracker for tracking issues in apps that I create. When an user is disciplined and goes straight to mantis to write a issue report, he/she will have fastest response and everything regarding the issue will be very easy to track.

However, not everyone is keen to do so. They report their problems via phone, e-mail, don't report them at all.

What would be the best way to nudge them towards the using a bugtracker system? Clearly, they HAVE to see some immediate benefits so they can return and look for more benefits.

EDIT:

I am talking about support for the products that I sell as an ISV.

Daniel Mošmondor
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7 Answers7

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Your bug tracker is for your convenience, not your customers'. If you can't be bothered to take their phone or email issue and enter it yourself, how do you think they feel?

You need to be able to enter issues and assign them manually to a client. Then when they call in with an issue you can say, "Thanks for reporting that! I'm going to enter it into our issue management system, and you'll start getting email (or whatever) as we deal with it. In the future, if it's easy for you, you can enter that sort of thing right there. Or feel free to just call me, that's fine too."

One of the best such systems I've worked with as a customer is the one at the hosting provider I resell. Email to support@ gets parsed for a domain name in the subject line, assigned to a client account based on the from address, and auto-entered into their ticket system. Pretty slick.

Dan Ray
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A user who complains is better than one that doesn't, gives up, and calls your competitor. For this reason, I would make it as easy as possible to send a complaint. I would let them continue to call and/or send emails and not ask them to file bugs.

Look at it from their point of view -- If you had to not just take the time to call/write an email but also be forced to learn someone's wonky bug tracking system-- odds are you're just not going to complain.

If need be, hire a customer service person so developers don't get interrupted. They can take the complaints from the customers and make bugs for the dev team.

Doug T.
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6

I don't know Mantis specifically, but can it be configured to monitor an e-mail address and automatically generate reports from them? I know other systems (like JIRA for example can).

The problem then becomes it getting them to use the right e-mail address!

ChrisF
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"Please report this on the bug tracker at http://your/url/. I cannot keep track of bugs if you don't report them there."

Perhaps it's possible for you to write a plugin for your mail client to turn an email into a bug report, or to use a dedicated mailbox - bugs@foo - for taking bug reports. (But the latter of course requires training your users...)

Frank Shearar
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Internally we have a site template for web applications that includes a feedback link in the corner. This feedback link is provides the user with a jQuery UI dialog that prompts them for a description of the bug, new feature, or other that they encountered and also captures some details about the page and time they are reporting from. All this is pushed directly into JIRA behind the scenes and the user can get updates with the status of the issue.

In sort the best way of doing things is usually by making it as simple as possible for the users, if there is a feedback link in a menu that handles sending the information where it needs to go, they are much more likely to use it.

rjzii
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Well, if you want to use a global exception handler, then you've got lots of options. For Delphi we use MadExcept, but also have used Eureka Log, both of which will (with the user's go ahead) email, or upload via HTTP, a bug report to you.

You could have a button in your app that just throws an exception and launches this bug tracking stuff. MadExcept is pretty cool because it takes a screenshot of the app and uploads it along with the bug, that way even if the user can't properly explain what they were doing, you can have a pretty good hankering.

Something else to think about is coding to make it obvious where bugs are coming from. If you've got beta users, maybe include debug info with their app so you can get extra data from them when crashes happen.

None of this helps for implementation bugs (i.e. the button is in the wrong spot) though so hopefully you don't have any of those.

Peter Turner
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We got the biggest increase in uptake by configuring a service to pick up email from an address and automatically log it as an issue. The nice side effect of this system is that you can also easily add conversations to an issue by including a special syntax in the subject (eg. TeamITNo:12345). Also, if you send all your email communication via this system, and they hit reply then you'll get the reply right back into the bug tracker, with the issue updated.

This had the biggest positive effect, as it uses technology users are comfortable with, and also means you get all your issues in one place.

Tom Morgan
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