Create Bug Report Master List

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feartheturtle
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Create Bug Report Master List

Post by feartheturtle » Wed Feb 03, 2010 10:03 am

dpierce has come up with a solid idea - see link below and a quote from his post of a few minutes ago. Perhaps others have mentioned it in the past, but to have a reference list of known bugs that ARE NOT account specific (i.e. affects several or many users at one time) would be a handy tool to quickly see if a recent problem you are experiencing is known by Ooma support and is being addressed in some fashion. Good idea dpierce!


http://www.ooma.com/forums/viewtopic.ph ... 7&start=30
dpierce wrote:
ntoy wrote:Hello sfhub,

Yes, the workaround of enabling blacklists is still necessary for the time being until we are able to resolve bug 6105.
You offer the bug ID like we have some sort of access to check up on these things. Is there an online maintained list of all the bugs or considered a future enhancements?

I would appreciate a list I could easily go to an find out what the devil’s going on. When I purchased this setup I assumed all the features your company boasted to me about were already part Ooma subscribers experiences. I’ve done a bit of investing in my time, and this is what we refer to as ‘vaporware’.

Subscribers should be able to do something more than become a forum regular. Searching the forums every other day to see if features are fixed or available isn’t my idea of time well spent.

Quickly referring to a master list for these types of issues would be most helpful because lord knows Ooma has a real problem with communication and searching forums is hit or miss.

amoney
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by amoney » Wed Feb 03, 2010 2:11 pm

My guess this will not fly, companies normally dont like to show their laundry list of problems. Does not make them look so good, go figure.
Comcast > Telo > WRT54G

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dpierce
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by dpierce » Thu Feb 04, 2010 8:35 am

Thank you "feartheturtle". I hope you get the responses we are both hoping.

I understand "amoney"'s point. That being said and I mean no disrespect as I'm sure his voice can be echoed by other Oomaitas, but in the beginning I believed Ooma to be a new kind of company with a bold and new way of doing business. I would hope that the addition of a simple master or "dirty laundry" list would do more to get then keep customers than to detour them.

Like many of you; I've spent hundreds on a base and multiple handsets that have had nothing but problems from the beginning. From features that don't work, support that seems not to know the product, and hardware failures galore. I've got to say that I've detoured plenty from Ooma since buying into this technical abortion. Some, not all, but a significant number of my ill feelings toward Ooma the company would have been avoided if I’d been better informed.

Keeping customers informed makes them feel part of the problem and therefore as much a part of a solution. Having a master list of things your customer will eventually discover themselves through use is just good old fashion customer care.

Simply pushing out release dates on features that your still printing in manuals and publishing on websites while ill-informed offshore support continues to acts surprised each time they hear of a problem your having. As if it was the first time they had heard of it. Even though the called about problem is a KNOWN issue. Ignorance is an acceptable practice. Leaving confused customers to self support will most certainly produce a mountain of dirty laundry of which Ooma should rightfully be embarrassed to air.

The errors a product has doesn’t have to define the company producing it. The way that company goes about solving errors will though. Ooma is falling into a trap that is historically very difficult to recover from. Distancing themselves from their loyal fan base by not clearly outlining issues found and inviting them in to be part of the solution is a big, big mistake. Ooma could learn a lot from the open source community model. The Ooma forum to date is really just a list of people having problems. Other forums have a mix of praise, fanboys, trolls, tech geeks, product masters, and everything in-between. The current Ooma forum "is" in reality a master list of errors in haphazard form.

Again, I mean no disrespect to others points of view and I would invite other articulations.

amoney
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by amoney » Thu Feb 04, 2010 1:21 pm

I absolutley agree!!!

Sorry, I did not intend to torpedo the "spirit" of this thread request.

Ooma prove me wrong!

;)
Comcast > Telo > WRT54G

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DTMF
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by DTMF » Fri Feb 05, 2010 6:41 am

I'm sure that behind the scenes there is a list of bugs. That's the kind of thing that for-profit technology enterprises always consider a company secret.

Why should Ooma hand their competitors a list of flaws in their service that can be used in advertising? It's a new service, there are bound to be issues. When you go with a service operating on both the cutting edge of technology and the bottom end of price, you have to be prepared to accept that you will sometimes see ragged edges. Things may take time to be corrected because there aren't an army of technicians and engineers tweaking and fixing... we're not paying Ooma enough to fund an army. :D
Ooma customer since November 2009.
Formerly employed at another VoIP company.
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dpierce
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by dpierce » Fri Feb 05, 2010 10:20 am

Should I comment? Is it really necessary and helpful to the thread? I really don’t wish to get into a debate about Ooma creditability and the intent of the company to make VoIP available to all at a fair price to the best of its abilities. For Ooma has clearly shown that it wishes to do so, but is it able? I do wish to say that I respect your comments and you are astute to pointed them out. I will desperately attempt to remove emotion from this, but I am after all human. That said, here is my response.

This has been Ooma's standard defense to all criticism of product flaws, missing features, or overstepping its advertized quality of service. The truth is this is not a free service or even a cheap service. It is a lower cost over time service and there is nothing wrong with consumers demanding a product deliver on the claims made by the company manufacturing it. Ooma is really no longer a “new” service either. It’s young, but so are most internet based innovations.

The Telo and its handset are still being advertized as if every feature is enabled and fully functional. Ooma has had a pass on this for far too long and much longer than a larger company would get. I feel its customers are the ones on the "cutting edge" and are the ones actually taking all the risks. No, that "give'em a break, their new and we don’t pay them enough" argument no longer serves to extinguish the voice of reason. I do appreciate the founder’s vision and fully respect what he has so far accomplished. But the company IS growing and it's time Ooma as a company started growing up as well. It can begin by take responsibility for things. They should clearly be able to see at some point here that they need to either fix things at a much faster pace or ask for help in doing so.

A master list of current bugs or known issues is one way of getting that help from its vigilant users. I'm sure you are all aware of the fact that this concept is nothing new. In fact it can be found elsewhere. Put "Current Known Issues" in a Google search and you will see other well known companies doing just we are suggesting here. Without a doubt I believe firmly that this would be the right thing to do. Specially since Ooma at its core is not like other VoIP companies and has relied on consumers word of mouth to sell its product. I would point out that It risks losing its only means of market proliferation by not including its willing fan base in the process bug eradication through open identification. Even a partial disclosure approach may just fortify the levees holding back the looming tide of discourse.

I maintain that a master list of current known issues made available to registered customers is a good idea. But, this is not my thread to control and I have a propensity for gab. I sincerely thank “feartheturtle” for wishing to seek its inception through an open dialog. I’ve clearly started my position and risk repeating myself endlessly. So, I’ll leave it to you all to comment, debate, or berate.
Last edited by dpierce on Fri Feb 05, 2010 11:34 am, edited 2 times in total.

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DTMF
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by DTMF » Fri Feb 05, 2010 11:06 am

Put "Current Known Issues" in a Google search and you will see other well known companies doing just we are suggesting here.
I decided to take you up on that challenge. The only public company I saw with one of those pages in the first 100 search results was Google. Google has tens of thousands of employees, billions of dollars and a unique commitment to open-source, so Google is not the norm.

What I did see was dozens of user forums compiling their own lists of known issues with whatever product they were fans of, but I did not see a vast array of well-known companies doing this.

It's easy to look up known issues with Firefox, but Mozilla is not a for-profit enterprise. Public bug lists may be common in the open-source world, but they are not common in the for-profit technology world. I used to work for a for-profit technology company that had a bug list and I can assure you that it was a closely-guarded secret.
Ooma customer since November 2009.
Formerly employed at another VoIP company.
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caseybea
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by caseybea » Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:11 pm

It's no secret that there's tons of bugs with the Ooma service. We who peruse the forums often know what they are. All people are asking is that they be acknowledged by the company, with ETA timeframes for getting the annoying issues dealt with.

Many software companies I deal with do this. Some even allow customer feedback (voting, in a sense) to help give priority to issues that the majority of customers feel are serious.

If ooma wants to be wildly successful, they need to buck the trend and oh, I don't know.. keep the customers informed? What a concept....

Wait. I can hear it now. "We apologize you're having these problems. Here's your ticket number, I *promise* someone from customer support will call you within 24-48 hours about that".

Um, right.
Ooma Hub customer since January 2010
Telo2 upgrade (hub retired) October 2016
Service Level: Core

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Bobby B
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by Bobby B » Fri Feb 05, 2010 6:40 pm

It is a good idea to make a list of known issues available to customers. If a customer is running into a bug, I no problem giving them the bug number or posting it on the forum so that they can reference the bug in the future.

I'm not sure why other companies don't maintain master lists, but the main reason we don't maintain a master list right now is the resources needed to keep it up to date. Really a master list should automatically be generated from a company's bug reporting system (where you could selectively expose external details about bugs to users). Unfortunately, our bug system is limited right now so we'd need to put quite a bit of re-work to support this in the future.
dpierce wrote: I maintain that a master list of current known issues made available to registered customers is a good idea. But, this is not my thread to control and I have a propensity for gab.
Bobby B

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dpierce
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Re: Create Bug Report Master List

Post by dpierce » Fri Feb 05, 2010 7:54 pm

Bobby B wrote:It is a good idea to make a list of known issues available to customers. If a customer is running into a bug, I no problem giving them the bug number or posting it on the forum so that they can reference the bug in the future.

I'm not sure why other companies don't maintain master lists, but the main reason we don't maintain a master list right now is the resources needed to keep it up to date. Really a master list should automatically be generated from a company's bug reporting system (where you could selectively expose external details about bugs to users). Unfortunately, our bug system is limited right now so we'd need to put quite a bit of re-work to support this in the future.
dpierce wrote: I maintain that a master list of current known issues made available to registered customers is a good idea. But, this is not my thread to control and I have a propensity for gab.
Thanks Bobby B, your moderator post are always helpful. What you say makes sense of course and I see the problem there. Yes, while personally I’d like to see the upgrades to the system that allow such transparency in the not so distant future. But yes, I’d rather all current resources go towards fixing the actual bugs at the moment than waste it on indexing them.

I just wonder if there isn’t some way the support team could post an abbreviated list of some sort. Let’s say the top 100 called about. It would reduce calls to support and the manpower needs that must cause. At the very least it would let folks know someone’s aware of things and are investigating it.

Can you not have someone offshore sit at a computer for one day a week and update a list for us? It might just actually save money in the long run and that’s what Ooma’s all about right? Saving money in the long run.

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