Today I filed a bug, which I should have filed almost one year ago. I saw it several times, I even had solution for it, but I didn’t think/know it was a bug. It was reported here: http://world.episerver.com/forum/developer-forum/Problems-and-bugs/Thread-Container/2016/9/commerce-catalog-randomly-goes-empty-until-website-restart/ and here http://world.episerver.com/forum/developer-forum/Episerver-Commerce/Thread-Container/2016/6/addstaticattributepropertyvalues-object-reference-exception/
I’ve always wanted to say Episerver products are perfect frameworks and have no bugs at all. But that’s not true. Despite of having very talented developers and dedicated QAs, and a very high requirement for quality (“Quality is non-negotiable”), we still miss to catch some (very few) bugs.
Regarding the bug above – to be fair, the symptoms are not clear and it can be anything wrong. I even mentioned the fix (aka the required configuration) here: http://world.episerver.com/Modules/Forum/Pages/Thread.aspx?id=133442 , but I just didn’t/couldn’t connect the dots.
In my defense, answering questions on World forums is not my main responsibility. My main responsibility is, of course, writing code – developing new features, fixing bugs, etc, you name it, as a normal developer would do. I usually browse World forums when I am waiting for a build to complete, or I need a break after a long debugging session. If I know the answer, good, I type it in. If I don’t, or if I don’t clearly understand the problem, I ask for more information. If I feel that I can quickly check the problem on my machine site, I’d do it, but I time-box myself to 5 minutes max, before going back to my daily work. If I can’t do any of those, I just … keep silence.
I am speaking for myself, but I believe that most of “answerers” on World forum do the same. And that’s when the complicated, unusual questions left unintended. Without a push for answer, the question will just be there, and it can be anything, a faulty configuration, a bad line of code, or – in some cases – a bug in Episerver frameworks (CMS, Commerce, Find).
That’s when you should contact Episerver developer support service. They are experts in gathering information, analyzing and finding answers. Once your question reaches Developer support service, it can be turned to a simple ticket, a bug, or a support case. But it’s in the system. Our system. It’ll not be forgotten, or ignored. You’re guaranteed an answer!
The bug I mentioned above was created then fixed in a very short time. For me, it’s a lesson learned. But you can always help yourself by contacting our developer support service on your issues. When a bug is discovered and acknowledged, it’ll help saving a lot of time for future references. And by that, you will help other developers as well!
Indeed, however sometimes it can be more tricky to log a support ticket when symptom is not very clear, like the one my colleague put on the forum recently regarding to providerid sometimes wasn’t set caused total amount being calculated incorrectly.
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved” 🙂