What Happens When A Bug Is Reported?

Have you ever wondered what happens when a bug is reported on our support forums? How quickly we respond? How do we decide if something needs to be fixed immediately, in the next scheduled release, or somewhere down the road? We thought we’d take just a few moments and let you behind the curtain to see how we attack a critical problem. Here’s a glimpse at a bug that was reported back in December:

There Was A Bug!

On Wednesday, December 18th we released an update to the Events Calendar PRO, version 3.3. We were pretty excited about it…until Thursday morning that is. You see on Thursday morning, multiple users reported a bug immediately after updating to version 3.3. The bug turned all-day events into multiple day events, which caused the event information to be incorrect. Our amazing users not only reported the bug, they provided detailed bug reports including system information, theme information, and detailed errors. This made reproducing the problem easier, which in turn allowed us to get cracking on a hotfix much faster.

Hotfix, Engaged

After every release we pay special attention to the forums, to try and catch any new bugs right away. We chose to make a hotfix for this particular bug because it was so widespread, causing issues for everyone. After the bug was identified, it was then logged into our system and prioritized against other tasks for the day. At this point we were able to start digging into the code to fix the bug. Our team spent a few hours fixing, patching and testing and were then able to deploy a hotfix, 3.3.1, to WordPress.org that very same day.

Update Released

By the morning of Friday, December 20th, it was confirmed by our users that the hotfix addressed the problem. So, in less than one day our team was able to identify and fix the bug as well as release an update.

We take great care in building our products well. Occasionally, however, bugs sneak themselves in. Fortunately for us, we’ve got a compassionate user base that reports the bugs to us expediently and understands that no one is perfect. It’s our desire to fix these bugs quickly and effectively so that our users can continue to enjoy their experience with our products. We hope that this brief glimpse behind the curtain helps you understand a bit about the support process and how much we value providing quality service to our users.

Share Your Story

If you’re a support expert, or you’ve had good or bad experiences with our products or any others we’d love to hear your experiences. What has proven to work well for you and your team? What were the biggest challenges you’ve encountered? We are continually working to make our support, QA, and response time faster, more efficient, and more effective. Let us know by leaving a comment!