How to report a LabVIEW bug... call NI?

[Donald]

It seems not to be possible for a non-premium member to edit this knowledge base article... so I just created this post instead.

NI please could you not improve the procedure of reporting bugs? I'm sure there is many stressed developers who will not report a bug if they have to start calling NI to report a bug.

I have noticed a lot of developers - even experts that have used labview since 1.0 - not reporting a bug just because they think it cost them to much time and there will not be a (free) service pack anyway. I also commited this sin...and know how frustrating it must be for the NI Core LV developers not to be aware of a bug that caused a lot of headache but could have been reported.

The success of the LAVA buglist seems to be a hint that there is missing something in the whole process of reporting bugs. The bug list on the NI forum is not complete at all and even difficult to find if you are not a forum expert.

A suggestion I have:

Please have a look at Solobug which is a small application included with TestTrack issue tracker from Seapine.

I'm sure something similar is possible with LabVIEW.

Carefull bugtracking by the LV users is what NI needs, not making phone companies rich, often developers in Europe work over the borders and phone calls are time consuming and very expensive in Europe. As I live in a country where there are 3 official languages a phone call isn't always the most 'bugfree' conversation.

Phone support with NI Belgium however is most often excellent and should be used for urgent problems or discussing dramatic price reductions not to discuss a minor bug :-)

As an alliance member I've only seen offical direct mail by NI about flaws in hardware, why nothing about software. Microsoft also gives detailed information about bugs that affect most users.

It is a pleasure to see the commitment of some NI developers on this forum to follow up bug reports. Please NI, support them with good bug tracking procedures!