BugSense for WP8 - Error tracking/ Quality metrics

Comments

Hamishwillee - Subedited/review comments

HI Aady

My concern with this is that it adds nothing much over the existing documentation here: http://www.bugsense.com/docs/windowsphone - indeed it probably isn't as complete.

It is worth having a page on this topic to highlight it to developers. However there isn't much point in creating documents that aren't as complete as the originals. So I recommend you either:

• Extend this with a buildable example that shows how to do everything in the document and everything possible with the API so that people could give it a try and see the source code used "in anger", or
• Remove the "how to" stuff and have a very clear link to the above documentation. So in this case this becomes an introduction to the features and then clear link to where people go for the installation manual

Does that make sense?

In terms of subediting, I made some changes to wiki style and English expression. For your future writing, a few notes:

• For feature lists, it is usually best not to use headings because these end up making the table of contents very big. Use bullets unless there is a LOT to say in each section.
• Always link to your references or other documentation you built on. Usually best to do this in first mention, or in a SeeAlso as I have done
• I tend to use bold for instructions to press keys and for file names.

I do think this is a great tool to know about so thanks for raising it. Could you also add this to Toolkits and Libraries for Windows Phone ?

Regards

Hamish

hamishwillee 09:01, 28 January 2013 (EET)

Aady - Thanks for the review

Agreed to your suggestions and you got that right, the intention here was not to give a complete indepth re-view of BugSense, but to let developers know that there is something good that exists, introduce its functional power and direct to indepth original documentation.

Also thanks for subediting the article to make it more like wiki style.

Added it to the WikiTopics in Toolkits and Libraries for Windows Phone.

Regards,

Aady

Aady 18:47, 28 January 2013 (EET)

Hamishwillee - Thanks

Hi Aady

OK, so I've removed everything in the "Getting Started" section and replaced it with the link to the official docs - as discussed there is no point having partial howto description here as it detracts from the original. I think now the article is good - it provides an overview of the tool features and links to key documentation. In essence we've created an entry point to the tool - its not innovative but it is useful.

I will also remove the Summary as it doesn't particularly say anythign useful

Thanks for this, also for updating the Toolkids doc!

Regards

Hamish

hamishwillee 01:38, 29 January 2013 (EET)

Aady - Sounds good

Thanks for making the changes.

Regards,

Aady

Aady 18:24, 29 January 2013 (EET)

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This article introduces BugSense, a leading crash reporting and quality metrics service for mobile apps that supports both Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8.

See Also

BugSense Windows Phone 7/8 Documentation

Article Metadata

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Compatibility

Platform(s): Windows Phone 7.5, Windows Phone 8

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Article

Created: Aady (26 Jan 2013)

Last edited: hamishwillee (29 Jan 2013)

Introduction

A developer's job doesn't end when their application is deployed to marketplace. The most critical part in any software development life cycle is support. Unless you give a quality app and provide quick fixes to bugs, users wont be really happy to use your application again and again. However this is more easily said than done. As a developer you need to be aware of what current bugs are occurring to different users, its frequency, which devices are specifically affected, and so on.

Bugsense is an out of the box solution for this problem. It is quality metrics/error tracking SDK. Provides a real-time bug tracking service which can be used by mobile application developers for getting instant notification and detailed information about the errors and provides “fixed notifications” back to users.

BugSense Features

BugSense offers following features:

• Quick Integration with mobile apps - developers can start using the BugSense features out of the box with minimal configuration. We will see an example of this in later part of the article.
• Real Time crash reports
• Quick notification to developer when a new error is detected
• Quality Metrics & Analytics - Statistical information on the errors received like number of user affected by a same type of error, type of error which occurs recurring, which device is affected, etc. Gives critical and different dimension of errors which gives a insight to developer on the nature and probable reason of the problem occurred.
• Error Insights - In addition to error notification BugSense helps in getting details about the error including: level of error, locale of user device, details about other features like Wifi, GPS, etc which helps in understanding the cause of issue.
• Filters - Narrow down the error log focus by using advanced search and filter facility. Developer can filter the logs based on app version, OS version, status, time, etc.
• Fix Notifications - Notify users that the error encountered by them earlier is fixed. This increases the faith and confidence of user in your application and certainly will help in creditability.
• Performance - Logging and error tracking is considered as an overhead, but with BugSense you can be rest assured that the performance of your application will not be affected.
• Integration with JIRA - Seamless integration with JIRA 5 will make the developers life easy. BugSense takes care of creating automated issue on error encounter and also smartly decides the priority depending upon the number of instances occurred for that error.

Getting started

BugSense provide excellent documentation on how to get started on both Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8: Using the Windows Phone library