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Feature Request FR-2817
Product Area Developer Experience
Status CLOSED

27 Voters

Centralised APEX bugs submission

pmushkov Public · Oct 27 2022

Idea Summary
Extend the Ideas App, create special section in the APEX Discussions Community or create a new App, dedicated specifically to bug reporting. Allow users to track the status of the bug and provide additional information if needed. Although it might bring some false entries (not real bugs), it will also speed up the process of bringing bugs to the attention of the APEX team. Which ultimately should help APEX get better. Furthermore, the entries from such an application could be automated to go into the internal bug reporting system and not being manually entered, as I guess this is the current process.

Use Case
Sometimes, especially after a new release, people face bugs in APEX - some small, some bigger. There are many channels currently to reach out to the dev team and people might get confused where to go. The option to file a Service Request is also not a preferred one for two reasons - not everyone has got one (many developers a using free versions of the DB and APEX) and also many find it too bureaucratic. 

Preferred Solution (Optional)
Create special section/filter/badge in the APEX Discussions Community forum, create a new App, dedicated specifically to bug reporting or extend the Ideas App. The application should allow users to add new entry with several mandatory parameters:

  • APEX version
  • Database version
  • ORDS version
  • Bug description

and some optional ones:

  • Screenshots
  • Debug information
  • Code snippet
  • Specific environment settings

If there is a dedicated system for that, it should register the Bug and provide a tracking ID and Status ID to the user. Sometimes it might not be an actual bug that is being reported, but developer's mistake, so there should also be a status ‘Not a bug’ to mark it.

If the APEX Discussions Community forum is used for this purpose, here are some sample improvements that could be done:

When you are here ⤵️

image.png

Add a new option on the “Ask a Question” dropdown - Report Bug ⤵️

image.png

Add a new section - Bug Reporting ⤵️
 

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We reviewed this idea carefully and came to the conclusion that it does not constitute an appropriate APEX feature request.

Comments

Comments

  • mudhaffer1990 OP 2.7 years ago

    Great idea
    I was already intending to put forward the same idea. Indeed, there is an urgent need for a place to report problems and follow up on the status of the report

  • matt.ball OP 2.6 years ago

    There is already a tool for all this it's called Oracle Support.

    However Oracle support is difficult to navigate and the process from ticket to bug is tortuous and feels too much for minor niggles. So a simplified process for raising minor bugs would be nice. Or MOS could be made user friendly.

  • gabriel.diaz.arias OP 2.6 years ago

    I do absolutely agree with this, it would really help apex team to be more in contact with developers that might deal with all kind of bugs. We can now use oracle forums for this also, but our reports might be lost among hundreds of other less relevant messages. But this seems to be an Oracle policy, as Apex is “free” as soon as you don't intend to use in any production environment. Any big release of apex comes with lots of bugs because of the quantity of new nice features included, and is recommended to just wait for a few patches before making the jump to a new big release. The problem is that you cannot access to those patches if you don't have oracle support. Apex patches shoud be accessible by everyone, because if not, saying that apex is free is just a lie. Same with bug reporting. The experience in my company with oracle support this year have been a disaster. Issues never reach proper teams until 3 months of back and forth messages, asking for crazy complex logs for self evident issue (For example just making a click to reproduce the issue). Issues are being sent to “cheap” service centers in other countries, and they always ask you again and again already answered questions, until the incident is raised to proper teams after months or checked by the responsible of that area of oracle support. In apex related issues in oracle support I wasn't able to reach the apex team, and I did receive a much better response in the forums by other users or by apex team members. Same with other oracle products, database bugs, sqldwveloper etc.

  • doug.gault OP 2.6 years ago

    I agree with @matt.ball that Oracle Support is probably the best place for this, but 

    1. Oracle Support is ugly and hard to use
    2. A fair share of people who run into bugs on APEX may not have access to Oracle Support because they're using XE or ATP Free or APEX.ORACLE.COM or…… 

    Having been “on the inside” I know that there is potential to integrate an APEX application like this with the bugDB database that sits behind the Oracle Support Portal. 

    Could be a great opportunity to create a more dedicated funnel for APEX issues whereby the actual bugs still get shunted through to the BugDB database.

  • jayson hanes Admin OP 2.5 years ago

    In the “about application”, we have this guidance for APEX bugs:

    Where should I report bugs?

    Not in the Ideas app. Please report bugs using Oracle Support or the APEX Discussion Forum to ensure your submission is received correctly and we can communicate with you. Here are some tips when reporting bugs:

    • Describe the issue in as much detail as possible
    • Provide APEX, Database and other relevant environment information
    • Include steps to reproduce the issue (a reproducible app on apex.oracle.com is even better)
    • Prefix your title with (example) "APEX 21.1 Bug:" followed by a brief description of the issue