Beta program improvements

[smitmartijn]

Hi,

Besides the sometimes clumsiness of the beta client itself (i.e. the updater --beta issue), I'm wanting to improve the beta program overall and possibly get more people involved. I have some ideas which I want to bounce off you and see if you have any thoughts.

For one, beta users should be able to test all features of the client, which is sometimes not possible with premium features. I'd like to push free premium towards beta users, but there has to be a certain commitment from them, so that joining the beta program isn't just another way to get the advanced features. ;-) I'm thinking to include a certain level of required participation, if they want the premium features. Something in the form of a survey, a bug hunt competition or getting this forum to be more active.

What do you think? Would the premium draw users to the beta, or would the required bits be a threshold people don't want to breach?

Any other thoughts on how it can be improved?

Thanks!

[jerone]

Getting a premium account for committed beta testers sounds like a good deal for both parties. For me however, I download the latest version to get the latest features before 'everyone' else does. When I see a bug, I report it (most time to late), but I'm not actively testing every feature for bug hunting.

I would suggest that people can still install the 'normal' beta or sign-up for a beta-testing-program to get the premium commitment.

[Killerc]

This went from a suggestion thread to, no way am i wasiting more time writing a dissertation when i have a 1 line suggestion. I beta test all the time, most i get in return usually is a wall of undocumented bugs. Life's to short to have that much time to dedicate to as many projects as us software engineers don't have and thats without taking on exrta.

[smitmartijn]

(04-21-2015 11:49 PM)Killerc Wrote:  This went from...

Not sure where you got a dissertation format from, that will definitely not be the case. Plus it'll not be required to do anything if you don't want to, you'll just not get benefits if you just chose to just use the beta client as a regular version.

The main idea is to get more people interested who have some spare time (maybe like 15min a week) to proactively look for bugs and report them, so bug can be caught quicker.

[valuial]

I think it's a good idea to encourage actual beta testing.

I'm new to WhatPulse so I might have missed something, but: Is there some kind of bug-tracker, where you can easily search for already known bugs and report found bugs with a few clicks and a short description? (select client version, maybe attach a screenshot or files? Separate crash-reports from not working functionality and feature requests...)

I think that would encourage users with less time to write usable bug reports, and let the community see things getting done.

[smitmartijn]

(05-07-2015 11:37 AM)valuial Wrote:  Is there some kind of bug-tracker

There have been a few times, but either they weren't being used, or they were being trolled. I eventually put a sub-forum on here to make it easier and encourage some discussion at the same time.

I've been thinking about using a bug tracker again, it might this ordeal easier, you're right.

[Megachip]

pro bugtracker. Btw, it is still not possible to merge (or spit) software ^^ vote for this feature request

An easier way for premium content test. Enable it in beta, disable it in stable.
Possible disable pulsing/using outdated beta clients.

[LukeLR]

I stumbled upon this thread already when the discussion came up in April, but I had not enough time back then for writing an answer. Since then, it occured to me that my mind went back to this discussion quite often, and now I found the time to write an answer

I'm a hobbyist developer and IT student, and I often notice bugs and problems in software I use. But when I report a bug, I want to do a detailed bug report, including some testing in which circumstances this bug occurs and in which not, maybe find out if the bug is reproducible, and this is, as you might guess, very time consuming.

Therefore I often just skip the bugs, and don't report them, because I often lack of sparetime to do so. I even remember a bug in the WhatPulse-Client on my Macintosh Laptop several months ago, the client suspended the whole system in it's startup several minutes, consuming 400% of CPU usage. After some research I found out that this bug was connected to mounting network shares, in fact, it only occured, when my Mac couldn't connect to my samba shares (e.g. when I'm not at home). It froze exactly until the timeout was reached and the Finder prompted that it was unable to connect to <share name>, then it worked fine. I thought about reporting this bug, but didn't know where, and needed my time for something else.

But getting a free premium membership in order for bugfixing on the beta releases could keep me motivated in reporting bugs as I find them Besides that only someone who has access to premium features could find bugs in them, so it is kind of neccessary to have access to all features if you wanted to do bug reporting. Furthermore, it would be nice to have some place for reporting the bugs, I think, a forum category should just do fine We could use these post icons to mark threads in fixed, unfixed, feature requests, etc. And it would be nice to see this forum being more active, I think (You should maybe create a dedicated side header for it, I think it is too hidden under the support-header, I needed to search for it and nearly thought it was gone ) This could also push some users in here.

I'll definitely follow this discussion to see where it goes, and if there was a beta testing / bug reporting program, I think I'd sign up

[Bloopy]

Just a suggestion: the 'rate the new features' questions on the Beta Survey should be optional. How am I supposed to rate the high resolution support or the client API if I've never experienced either?