In the past months, I've submitted some new bug reports:
When I google those bug report numbers, I don't get many hits.
Question: Why aren't those kinds of bug reports publicly available?
Thanks.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Chrisian, thanks so much for the feedback. It's happened to me numerous times where I have actually had to send the Bug to the person at Tech Support that was trying to help me for days and weeks- when I learned of the bug myself - but they still did not know about it. It should be communicated. It should be on the very page that user is using. Right now a bug that was found after months of me using the Survey123 Feature Reports too (and banging head against wall), "then" had to use our "company credits" to pay for "professional services" - where I provided just about everything, after all i had months of work into this, i provided all of the templates I had created with a simple request - why do the filters that are "visible" on the computer window "not the same" as the filters that generate in the PDF that is exported? It was absolutely maddening! That is when I find out-
1- That there is a bug associated with that - wonderful!
2- That the report template workaround that was suggested -- was a 38 page Microsoft Word Template that crashes my machine every time I try to edit it.
That is only ONE of many scenarios. That I can go into.
It's just not right. In my 25 years of developing apps across so many platforms with so many companies, I've never come across a company that operates like this. And again, I'm a huge fan of GIS, love some of the people that I've worked with, but the sheer lack of support online, allowing the paying customers to go crazy, then telling them that they need to pay for professional services to figure out a workaround to the defective platform that Esri is charging us for... is quite frustrating to say the least. I do love the world of GIS though!
I just wanted to share the bug that I am referring to above (who knows, this may cause a bit more urgency) - This is it
https://support.esri.com/en-us/bug/generating-reports-from-the-arcgis-survey123-web-design-bug-00014...
And when we looked at it August 2023, it was not actively being worked on. For a system that is supposed to be used for Feature Reports? How is that? We had issued 200 licenses for users to begin using the Survey that was developed, then "needed" to generate those reports- and then this! So I am "now" on the "ArcGIS Pro" Reports journey - while allowing my users to use the 38 page Feature Report Template temporarily. Very frustrating. Praying that ArcGIS Pro Reports are a bit more user friendly, while the last week of working on them has not been so, but I am holding out hope.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case; Attribute Driven Symbology BUG-000104316 was discovered back in April 2017 (BUG-000104316: The attribute-driven symbology assigned to features .. (esri.com)) and he is still not resolved!!! Elementary cartography...really poor!
@Bud, thank you for the reminder.
Digging into this, I found that any time a bug is modified or edited, including when a product team changes the fields for the latest version reproduced, the bug is taken offline immediately. Then it has to be republished by our copy editing team.
I acknowledge this is not a good experience, and the web team has it on their backlog to ensure bugs persist until they are explicitly republished.
I totally agree. With the sheer volume of bugs found in Esri software and the onerous technical support process, it should be much, much easier for users to not only report but to find information about existing bugs, updates, and workarounds that may pertain to them. This would save people a lot of hassle in trying to diagnose or wasting time with redundant tech support calls that go nowhere. (Or, as many young users do, in my experience -- not bother with any of that and eventually walk away from GIS). They need a Communities site for bug reports similar to Microsoft's feedback hub. There needs to be more transparency, and more accountability for actually fixing what often feels like beta software. There is no reason a private multibillion dollar corporation cannot hire the resources to at least human test things for basic functionality before release and to address issues and feature requests rapidly.
I 100% agree with this. I've seen several threads on geonet where Esri employees say to log a bug with Esri support. I'm not sure if Esri employees have actually interacted with Esri support, but that is often easier said than done. On average, I have to wait 3-5 days for the assigned support analyst to reply back to me anytime I reply back to their email containing questions. I've also been ghosted by Esri support when we schedule a call to review the issue.
Finally, when I can finally get support to reproduce my issue, the bug sits in the Esri backlog for months and months, if not longer, before most likely being marked as "Not in current product plan." I had to create an ArcGIS Idea for Esri to change their documentation to explicitly list why a tool would fail under certain conditions. Luckily, that post got Esri to change their mind and actually address the issue. But having to jump through all these hoops just to submit bug reports (that might have already been submitted in the past) is ridiculous.
Right. I have had numerous problems with support not showing up on the zoom call or not calling when they said they would. Or they call around the clock as if you are holding them up. The burden is always on the user to identify the cause of the issue. If you can't figure out how to reproduce the bug, they waste your time suggesting you try the same workarounds you've already tried and act like they can't do anything about it. This is why I don't report bugs anymore. It was way too much work and often ended with no resolution. So I post things as ideas, but then Esri complains that oh, you can't post that here. Fine! Won't post at all then. You'd think they'd be interested in doing something about their poor reputation for bugs and crashes...
I am finding that I could spend all day every day reporting new bugs to Esri. My organization pays a lot of money for this software, and here I am, essentially being an employee of Esri as a tester, except we're paying Esri, they're not paying me.
This can't continue.
Edit: I understand that Esri's business model is to deploy rapidly and fix later. But I feel we are at a breaking point. Esri needs to invest more in testing and bug fixing. Otherwise, customers will find the software too problematic and borderline unusable. Example: Is ArcGIS Pro the right tool for tabular/join-based geodatabase analysis? In that case, we couldn't use ArcGIS Pro due to bugs, and had to use Excel instead.
I completely agree. There is more tone policing than action. Sick of it.
What's disappointing is the sheer amount of bugs Esri must have in their software. You're just one person. I'm one person. And think about the number of bugs we, as individual people, have submitted. Then let's add up all of the other users of Esri's software and think about the amount of bugs that must be getting submitted.
The fact that my bug was first introduced in 10.9.1 and first logged on September 8, 2022 and sat in Esri's bug queue for 1.5 YEARS before finally being addressed and fixed in 11.4 (which will be over 2 years since the bug was first logged by the time 11.4 is released), should be enough to say how big Esri's bug backlog is. Or alternatively, how under-staffed Esri's bug fixing department is. Completely unacceptable and disappointing.