How can we write a bug ticket to speed up the resolution of the problem?

Our company operates a ticketing system to manage bugs and requests in an organised way. The following recommendation has been formulated with the help of our development and administration staff. A well-written ticket can greatly speed up problem resolution, even reducing the turnaround time to a fraction of the time. Please consider the following suggestions when writing your bug reports! The extra time taken up by poorly written trouble tickets will take up time that is useful, and as a result, even with good intentions, will take longer to process than necessary, resulting in a delayed solution.

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If your colleague can't work out what the problem is from the text of the error ticket, it's easy to misunderstand or not understand the problem at all. It is possible that our colleague does not see the same thing as you, and therefore cannot draw the right conclusion from the "Can't see anything" text. A well-written ticket can reduce the time spent on troubleshooting to a fraction of the time needed, which is better for you. A correctly written ticket has the following characteristics:

1. You can find the exact location where the error occurred (e.g.: I wanted to print a "Daily list" under the "Important lists" submenu item under "Lists".)
2. Include what is expected to work. (Eg: I filtered to today's worksheets, then clicked on the "Download PDF" button at the bottom.)
3. Include the error. (I downloaded the PDF, but there is an error in column 6, row 4. Here it should be 142Ft and it is 123Ft.)

If the staff member does not understand the problem, he will ask a question in response, which will delay the resolution.

Reproducibility

Our collaborator usually starts the processing of the error ticket by reproducing the error so for more complex problems it helps to describe the steps of the reproduction. If the error is related to the processing of a specific file (e.g. cannot be opened or imported), please attach the file. If our staff cannot reproduce the error, they will close the error ticket with the status "Cannot reproduce". If possible, please do not indicate the error in general terms (e.g. "Cannot generate Excel"), because our colleague will try to generate an Excel file at the first place he/she can find, and if he/she succeeds, he/she will also close the error ticket with the status "Cannot reproduce" (because he/she does not know where the error occurred, so he/she thinks that the problem exists everywhere). It is not realistic to expect your staff to try every possible place where an Excel file can be generated in the event of a generally reported error (e.g. "Unable to generate Excel").

Screenshot, if available

It is usually helpful to attach a screenshot to the error ticket, however, the screenshot is NOT considered relevant information by our colleagues. It is only helpful if you describe in text what the fault is and, if relevant, support it with one or more screenshots.

Separated better

If you have more than one issue to discuss at once, there is a strong urge to write it in one ticket. However, we do not recommend this method, as it may turn out to be unrelated issues, so that each sub-problem requires a different procedure (e.g. one is the result of misuse, but the other is a bug.) It is therefore difficult for our staff to give feedback on the "batch". For this reason, we ask that each problem be sent to us in a separate ticket, so that we can respond to each one in the appropriate way.

Circumstances, escalation

If possible, ask your colleagues if they are experiencing the same problem. In the case of a more complex error, it helps if we know what happened before (e.g. we updated the browser or the operating system.) If you send the error ticket by e-mail, make sure to include your contact details (e.g. mobile phone number). If you send the error ticket with your e-mail address registered with us, our staff will see which of our services you use. If you do not use this email address (even if it is the same as the one where the error occurred), please include your name and the name of your company in the error ticket.

One case only!

It is tempting to support the same case with multiple examples of multiple occurrences in multiple tickets. This is not helpful, rather it just takes extra time to realise that the same problem is described from a different angle, with a different example. In the same way, it is a setback if, after submitting several cases, we receive a "summary" ticket in which we get the contents of the previous three tickets in order ("So, in summary, the following problems still exist..."). So, we ask for one case in one ticket even if there are several cases of the same phenomenon and no summary ticket is needed.