Best repro steps. Ever

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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 (https://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 :-)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 26, 2005
    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.
  • Anonymous
    August 26, 2005
    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
  • Anonymous
    August 26, 2005
    Anyone have comments on what the best program to do this is?

    Thanks!
  • Anonymous
    August 26, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 26, 2005
    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.
  • Anonymous
    August 26, 2005
    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.
  • Anonymous
    September 02, 2005
    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
  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2007
    It's true. Believe it or not. When you submit a bug report on an MS product through http://connect.microsoft.com/