Announcing the Bug Report Wizard Beta

[DevelopmentDeadline]

Hello developers!

A big priority for the Developer Relations team this year is improving the bug reporting process and experience for both developers and Roblox engineers.

Behind the scenes, we have been overhauling how we triage, prioritize, and respond to bug reports. Our goal is to get reports to the right people sooner, better identify high priority issues, and, most importantly, keep the community informed.

Today, we are launching the next piece of this puzzle: The Bug Report Wizard^BETA.

What is the Bug Report Wizard?

The Bug Report Wizard is a tool developers can use to generate bug reports. Instead of manually filing a bug report by creating a topic, developers instead answer a series of questions and the topic will be auto-generated.

A screenshot of one section of the wizard

Why is it being introduced?

• Faster Resolution Time - One of the biggest factors in determining how long it takes to fix a reported bug is how long it takes an engineer to collect all of the information they need to identify and resolve it. With the wizard, we can directly gather the key information quickly. This will help our engineering team diagnose issues and unblock your work flows faster.
• Better User Experience - Roblox engineers often require ‘sensitive’ information such as log files, crash dumps and private place files to diagnose an issue. Currently, a developer has to send a separate private message with this information. With the wizard, this private message is automatically generated making it easier and quicker to provide these files.
• Better Triaging and Prioritization - With the wizard, the answers to all of the questions we ask are collected as data points that will allow us to efficiently triage, prioritize, file and assign bugs internally.

How can I use it?

Right now, the Bug Report Wizard is in Beta and available to all ‘Regular’ Dev Forum members and above. It can be found next to the ‘New Topic’ button on any Bug Report category.

Clicking the ‘Report Bug’ button will take you straight to the wizard

You’ll then be asked a series of questions. After completing the form, a topic will be posted in the appropriate category. If your report contains private information, a private message will be generated and linked to at the top of the topic.

A link to a private message in a bug report topic

You’ll also notice that we’ve separated bug reports from feature requests into their own top level categories. This is to make them easier to find.

What comes next?

While the Bug Report Wizard is in Beta, we’ll continue to allow Bug Reports to be manually created as standard topics. We understand that this is a new product, so we do not want to cause any sudden interference to your workflows.

Down the line, when we are happy the bug report wizard is doing its job well, we plan to disable topic creation in the Bug Report categories and only allow bugs to be reported using the wizard. For now though, we are concentrating on getting feedback from the developer community and observing how it performs.

How can I help?

If you have a new bug to report, please consider using the wizard. Of course, the same rules apply so please check to make sure another developer hasn’t already filed a report for your bug first!

Please do not create a ‘test’ bug report just for the purpose of trying out the new wizard. We’re trying to improve the bug reporting experience for developers and Roblox engineers so sorting through fake bug reports will delay our ability to address real bugs faster.

If you encounter any bugs, UX quirks, or have any feedback you’d like to share, please let us know on this thread. We may not be able to reply to everything, but your comments will be read.

Thanks,
Developer Relations

PS: Dark mode users, please extend our apologies to your retinas, we’ll make sure to support dark mode soon!

[StefanNL_Plays (Stef)]

Lets hope it improves the speed bugs are getting noticed and fixed

[MagikTheWizard (MagikManz)]

Ohh that makes sense (all the random posts that were posted), hopefully this will help get bugs get checked much faster and a better/proper process.
Make it easier for both the engineering team and the people reporting the bugs.

[souppression (soup)]

Although I’m not a Regular yet, this seems like a very useful feature so I’m glad it’s being implemented.

Will developers who report a bug receive personal feedback / updates when the bug has been fixed? If any additional information is required to fix a bug, how will these developers be contacted?

[TheCarbyneUniverse (Carbyne)]

@DevelopmentDeadline

While the Bug Report Wizard is in Beta, we’ll continue to allow Bug Reports to be manually created as standard topics.

After the topic system is taken down completely, do members still report bugs via Roblox support?

Also, how are ROBLOCRITICAL bugs going to be handled? Will the wizard allow the functionality why titling the report as such?

Lastly, I feel like the button on mobile should match the height of the topic and notification button so it doesn’t seem out of place:

Anyways, this is amazing to the communication between devs and engineers and to cracking down bugs easily and quickly.

[DevelopmentDeadline]

@TheCarbyneUniverse

Also, how are ROBLOCRITICAL bugs going to be handled

Hi, thanks for your message.

The wizard includes a question where the developer can nominate the severity of the bug. This will be one of the many factors / data-points the team looks at when triaging.

@TheCarbyneUniverse

Lastly, I feel like the button on mobile should match the height of the topic and notification button so it doesn’t seem out of place:

Thanks for the report! Could you DM me the device / browser you are using and its version?

[General_Scripter (Aaron)]

Do we still report issues with Roblox API endpoints under “Roblox Website”. I assume that different teams work on the user-facing website and the API endpoints - but maybe I am wrong.

If it is the case that they’re handled by different teams, I’d have thought it would be best to separate them (as you have now done for the DevHub) to provide better visibility to the correct team.

how it feels to use the bug report wizard

[Erklig]

It’s good news, atleast we’ll have a certain place to go and get better and faster results.

[HTTPMovedPermanently (nul)]

Is there a way or a future way planned for manual beta opt in? Maybe such as how Script Version History is?

[BanTech]

@sou_p

Will developers who report a bug receive personal feedback / updates when the bug has been fixed? If any additional information is required to fix a bug, how will these developers be contacted?

I imagine this will be the same as it is currently, as the generated topic is still a topic and the engineers can reply to it, tag you, send you a private message, and post updates on that topic.

[apenzijncoolenleuk1 (Apenz1)]

This is a step in the right direction. Sad to see that “members” can’t use this. It seems to me that this form should prevent bad/uninformed posts.
I don’t see a reason why this shouldn’t become available to everyone on the forum.
It is currently impossible (or really difficult) for members to post a bug report. Being a member myself I find this discriminating.
Does being a member mean one can’t post a good topic? Not in my opinion…

[HTTPMovedPermanently (nul)]

@apenzijncoolenleuk1

Being a member myself I find this discriminating.
Does being a member mean one can’t post a good topic? Not in my opinion…

I agree.

I currently participate in the Bug Bounty Program, and already have competence with security related vulnerability reporting, so for this to be accessible to something even members cannot reach (aka Regular) seems to suggest anyone who isn’t a Regular isn’t competent enough to use it, which offends me, seeing as I have existing knowledge of reporting bugs.

I really suggest that this is at least made as an application level opt in.

I am personally disappointed to see yet another important feature be locked behind a rank which currently is inaccessible anyway.

[BanTech]

It’s only the beta. I’d rather the team spend their time working on the product and reading the bug reports than spend the time reading applications.

There are enough regulars for them to successfully beta test it so there isn’t a need to add extra workload for the sake of it.

Once they’re happy, it’ll be opened to all.

[HTTPMovedPermanently (nul)]

Okay, so why not ask some to apply for access?

If it’s about bug reports being valid, I’m highly certain white hats like myself are more than eligible to do so, seeing as we already have experience with things such as HackerOne.

I’m fortunate to have access to a few direct channels, of which have the capabilities of filing internal reports, if you get what I mean.

However, others aren’t always able to do such.

[DMCPEPlays (dmc)]

Considering the fact that topic creation will be possible on such categories only with this Wizard later on, I think that you should implement a plugin that automatically enables it once a bug category has been chosen. It is really bad UX to force the users to visit the category pages, especially since TL1 users will be able to use that feature once it is fully ready. Some newer users may not know how to do that.

I don’t know if you forgot doing it or you just plan to do it later on, but you also need to update the “How to Report Bugs” topic.

Finally, I’d like to ask if this is the PA replacement. What will happen with Feature Requests?

[DMCPEPlays (dmc)]

It looks like you are not aware of the Discourse limitations - access to categories can only be given through trust levels or groups (in this forum, you can get access only to the international categories through groups afaik).

An application system wouldn’t be scalable, with dozens of TL1 users applying every day. This would be too much work for DevRel, and it wouldn’t even be an exaggeration to say that the applications would all be finally reviewed after this feature is available to the public.

As you can understand, promoting all those users to Regular is impossible, since TL2 users earn more privileges along with Bug Reports posting. The only solution would be to create a group for that, but I heavily doubt this will happen.

[BanTech]

@Aigeiros

Okay, so why not ask some to apply for access?

I answered this in my reply. It takes time to read and approve applications and it’s not necessary. The purpose of the beta is to test the system. They are capable of doing that without having to spend time adding more people to the beta.

The restriction is nothing to do with capability or skill. If it were, it would be open to everyone, as the entire point of the tool is to make it so that everyone can post reports without needing to be an expert or a white hat or have much experience at all.

This is a beta, not a release.

[rogeriodec_games]

If, on the one hand, it is said that this model will speed up the correction of newly reported bugs, on the other hand, the current bugs reported by the forum will be of lower priority, right?

[iGottic]

A very nice feature, glad this was made.

However, it’s still very disappointing that bug reports are locked to regulars only, especially considering bug reports are the only way to get regular.

I’ve had countless, reproducible issues with both the website and studio that have gone unreported so far, and allowing members to post reports through an approval was a good way to get it out there.