S60 Open to new features

The beta cycle for Carbide 1.2 last year nearly killed the Carbide Support team. To avoid that in the Carbide 1.3 beta cycle we did something users had been asking us to do for a long time, open our bug database. So we did.

There was a lot of historical resistance in the group to opening up the database, and some discomfort in knowing that everything entered could be seen by countless viewers. However, everyone knew something better had to be done, otherwise the “support tsunami” as I referred to it, would overwhelm the work required to actually fix bugs and get the latest release out the door on time. So we had meetings, we planned, we experimented some, and arrived at a solution that addressed all of the concerns we had.

Now you too can enjoy the open nature of our bug fixing process.

If you have a bug to report, or an enhancement request, you can now go to https://xdabug001.ext.nokia.com/bugzilla/, register yourself, and submit the bug using Bugzilla. Once registered you are entered into the Carbide.c.public group, which enables you to see all the bugs submitted by Carbide users. Once submitted the bug is seen both by the Carbide support team and engineers. From that point on any action we take on the bug will cause you to get a message so you can easily track the progress being made to solve your problem. It’s especially important to watch for them as many times we may need additional information from you so we can isolate and solve the core problem and not just the symptom

When the bug is fixed you’ll be notified of that as well. When that happens you can immediately verify the fix by downloading the Carbide development build containing the fix and letting us know if we were successful. If the development build doesn’t fix the issue then you need to let us know. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll assume your problem was solved, wait 3-4 weeks and then close out the bug report.

During the Carbide 1.3 beta cycle many people found the interaction and immediacy of using Bugzilla to submit bugs, and that the turn around time and level of communication with the Carbide team were vastly better than anything experienced before. Needless to say we will continue to use if until something better comes along.

And just so you know, the Carbide Support team survived the beta cycle with ease.