How to submit Bug Reports via the Ideas Portal

Announcement

Hi Community,

We’d like to remind everyone of the value your feedback and observations bring to improving InterSystems products. Our customer support is world-famous, but if you're not a formal customer yet it can be confusing how to engage with us. We have now filled that gap.

Every time you notice an issue - whether it’s a broken feature, a UI glitch, or something that just doesn’t work as expected - the Ideas Portal is now also the way to submit bug reports.

***REMEMBER: If you have access to WRC and your bug is time sensitive, please submit the report via WRC as usual!***

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to the Ideas Portal and click Add a new idea

2. Provide the title, short description, choose “Bug reports” in the category field, and click Next

3. On the next step, provide the name of the product, version, expected and actual behavior, steps to reproduce, and click Next. If necessary, you can attach files with screenshots, logs, or error messages (if available). The more detail you include, the easier it is for us to reproduce and resolve the issue.

4. Review your idea and click Add idea at the bottom of the page:

Once submitted, you’ll see your bug listed under the Bug Reports category. You can follow its status, comment on it, or provide additional details if needed or requested. Our team will review it and update the status as it progresses.

Your reports make a real difference. Thank you for helping us make InterSystems products better for everyone!

Dmitry Maslennikov · Nov 13

Thanks, finally, the place to report issues discovered during open-source projects development

1 0

Yuri Marx · Nov 14

Ideas portal with form bug (the text editor not loads):

0 0

Dmitry Maslennikov · Nov 14

faced that issue too, reloaded page and it's appeared

Worked, thanks

So, bugreports not visible to other users?

Ideas portal originally public, and would mean bug reports mostly related to projects to open source, or non enterprise.

If bug reports will not be open to everyone, means that InterSystems would have no intention to resolve those bugs, for issues with no support. And possibility to have duplications, which will not help. Closed bug reports will not get any votes, and it will not help to prioritize such issues.

What's the point then? While it's closed I don't see any point to post any more issue, it will not be resolved anyway.

Dmitry Maslennikov · Nov 16

As I expected no one gonna resolve bugs reported there, InterSystems is very busy on taking over my projects
I've already implented it a while back and faced bugs in the Driver, I'm asking to solve
Project that I implemented 3 years ago, and did not have any big issues, except that due to issues in IRIS SQL, now somehow does not suit InterSystems
But now InterSystems has decided to make its own SQLAlchemy, I wonder how they are going to do it without solving driver issues

Evgeny Shvarov · Nov 17

Hi @Dmitry Maslennikov ! Thanks for highlighting that! The point is that bugs can be dangerous, so we have the privilege to know it in advance and address and take care of InterSystems customers.

We introduced this service to have a legitimate way to report bugs found by developers while developing with InterSystems products.

jaroslav rapp · Nov 17

Do I understand this correct?

you get notice of a bug
but you hide it from the community
and let other developers run in the rathole

Thanks for explanation of Intersystems bug fixing philosophy.
This is some learning.

To @Dmitry Maslennikov :
An article with BOLD UPPERCASE TEXT has more publicity for sure and eventually faster reactions

Yes. You find a bug and report it privately to InterSystems, avoiding public exposure.

I wouldn't name this new service to report bugs as "philosophy" as it is a newly introduced service for developers who encounter bugs. We'll see how it works, and maybe after some time, we can assess if it can be a "philosophy" or a reasonable approach. Let's see.

Raj Singh · Nov 17

Remember we are not trying to replace the official way of handling customer bug reports, which is still via the WRC. We are simply expanding our ability to listen to users, with a way for developers who aren't operating under formal licenses -- mainly during hackathons or contests -- to get us information about problems they may be seeing.

Dmitry Maslennikov · Nov 17

No one is expecting that this way is replacing WRC. It's expected that WRC is keep everything private for everyone safety. When it comes to Ideas portal, originally all ideas was public and when Bug reports added there, would think about public too. And anyway ideas portal for bug reports would mean only open source projects where no sensitive data expected, and you could provide a note about it.

Such issues reported through Ideas portal, could be considered as known issues. And may be able to provide workarounds, if InterSystems would not fix it.

Unfortunately after so many years of interaction with InterSystems I can say, if someone without support will report about issues with InterSystems products, those issue will be forgotten. WRC quite fast responses, you are not on support. And I stopped using any form of private reporting. Only public exposure can help in resolving issues. Even projects such as InterSystems Cloud, where a bit different a way of support, it's quite difficult to get support.

Evgeny Shvarov · Nov 18

Public exposure of critical bugs is not the best way to support the community. On the contrary, it could be a serious threat to thousands of working and important services.

Dmitry Maslennikov · Nov 18

I did say nothing about critical bugs, critical bugs should go to WRC

Something that would bother open source developer, some obstacles that prevents to make open source project function in full power, that's where we need public bug reports

John Murray · Nov 18

Having read the "lively" thread discussion as it has developed so far, my suggestion is that the form should ask the poster if the report can be made public. If yes, then after it has been reviewed (by ISC staff? DC moderators?) for security implications it can be made public if there are none.

Thanks @John Murray ! It's a good idea. I'm not sure if the Ideas portal allows such functionality, as it turned out that we are not the first enterprise to consider bug reporting functionality via a private channel of communication, but it makes sense to me.

Raj Singh · Nov 18

Yes! Our default stance -- barring security or other concerns -- is to make these bug reports public after we moderate. We didn't think about needing the submitter to opt-in to public status because I assumed that would be expected. @Dmitry Maslennikov I hear you that an important audience for this is the open source developer who isn't a formally licensed InterSystems customer.