Feedback Hints & Tips
From Real Software Documentation
Getting Started in Feedback
Contents |
Interface
The Search Field and Sidebar are visible at all times, allowing for quick searching and navigation. The Activity Viewer can be toggled using options in preferences, and displays the status of any communication with the server. The Action Bar is found on most views and contains quick access to commonly used features of that view. Inside the Action Bar is the Action Menu, which contains less often used features.
Searching
The easiest way to begin is to simply search for a few keywords using the field in the upper left. Your results will appear in the area on the right. After browsing through the cases, if you do not find your issue listed, you can click the "Create New Case" button in the upper-right. If you do find your issue, you can double-click to view more information about it.
Favorites
Favorites in Feedback are very important. They provide Real Software with a useful metric to determine which cases are most important to the community. There are two ways to add a case to your favorites:
- Select the case in any case list, or view the case, then click the "Add To Favorites" button.
- Drag the case from the list into your favorites item in the sidebar.
Once a case has been added to your favorites, it is ranked based on its position on your favorites list and the edition of the product youʼre using. By default, cases are added to the bottom of your favorites. To prioritize your favorites, click on the "Favorites" sidebar item, then click on the "Edit Priorities" button in the action bar. You can then drag reorder your cases in the dialog, and click the "Done" button to save your priorities.
Finding an existing case, adding it to your favorites, and ranking it will more often result in a fix than creating a new (and possibly duplicate) case.
Public vs. Private Cases
Feedback allows you to specify cases which should be visible to everybody (public), and which cases should be visible to only you and Real Software (private). Whenever possible, cases should be kept public as the information could help the community. Additionally, private cases will not be ranked. Although Real Software looks at every case received, public or private, public cases are more likely to be fixed due to community exposure.
Since privacy was implied in the previous system. We decided that all cases automatically imported from the previous system are private by default. However, you may visit feedback.realsoftware.com to make some (or all) of your imported cases public. Doing so will take only a moment, and allows your cases to be ranked and prioritized.
Writing Good Summaries
To help reduce duplicate cases and ensure your case is found by other users looking for it, writing a good summary is extremely important.
The key to a good summary is to provide as much information as possible without going into excessive detail. For example, a good summary might look like:
"Focus not set to newly created items in code editor"
This summary is good because it mentions where the issue occurs (code editor), when the issue occurs (creating new items), and what is not correct (focus). A poorly written summary of the same case might be:
"Focus is wrong"
While it mentions the focus, it does not help a user searching know much about the case without opening it. In fact, some users might not consider the issue to be related to the focus at all and might skip over the case entirely.
Most good summaries are at least 6 words long. Feedback will rank your summary as you type it to help you write a good one.
Troubleshooting
Issue: Feedback says it cannot find any license keys for your account and certain features are disabled. Solution: When you first log in, Feedback attempts to determine which edition of our products you are using based on the license keys on your account. If your keys are purchased by a third party, they wonʼt be linked to your account and may result in this message. To inform Feedback of the license key youʼre using, click on the “Start Page” item in the sidebar, click on the gear icon in the action bar, and select "Preferences". Once there, click on the "Applications" tab and click the "Change" button in the "Editions" section. Enter your license key, and youʼre all set.
If Feedback claims the key may not be correct, the most likely issue could be the expiration date. Feedback requires license keys be up to date.
Issue: Feedback cannot communicate with the master server. Solution: You are most likely behind a proxy. At the login screen click the "Preferences" button and click the "Proxy Server" tab. Once you enter the information, you can use the "Test Connection" button to ensure it worked.
Feedback supports authenticated proxy servers using Basic or Digest encodings.
Advanced Searching
You can search for reports by who created them by using the "email" search criteria like "email:test@123.com" would search for reports created from the email account test@123.com.
Read-Only Mode
What is Read-Only mode?
In this mode, Feedback will not display your favorites list, you cannot submit new cases, and you cannot contribute to existing cases.
Why is Feedback running in Read-Only mode?
In order to submit and contribute to cases, you must be a current customer or have an active trial. This allows Feedback to determine how to rank your favorites.
How can get out of Read-Only mode?
Sometimes customers will have their license keys purchased by a third party. This makes it impossible for Feedback to automatically determine your keys. Luckily, you can tell Feedback which key to use. Simply go to Preferences, click on the Applications tab, then click the "Change" button in the Editions group. To have Feedback do this for you, click here. You will be presented with a dialog where you should enter your license key.
If your license key has recently expired and does not provide access to the most recent release, you may still download the newest release and start a trial. This will allow you to use the full features of Feedback, although trial users provide no rank information to their favorites.
