Bug reporting

I appreciate your perspective here. We've talked about making some kind of externally-facing bug reporting and tracking system available in the past, but it's not feasible for a variety of reasons.

Connect IQ is not open source, and touches several different proprietary technologies within Garmin. For example, Connect IQ is integrated into product firmware, relies on the app store, uses Garmin Connect Mobile and Garmin Express as an installation and communication channel, and interacts with Garmin Connect. Plus, we're frequently developing alongside unannounced products. Opening our tracking system to the public would necessitate exposing all of these other projects because they're all so tightly integrated. I'm sure you can see why that's undesirable. :)

Our objective is not to obfuscate problems in Connect IQ, however. While not perfect, we've tried to use this forum in a manner similar to what you describe above:

1. When a bug is reported here, we make sure we have all of the necessary information and attempt to reproduce the problem.
2. The information is transferred to our tracking system (unless it's a duplicate).
3. We respond to the thread to let the reporter know the issue is tracked, and the thread is tagged with our internal ticket number. The ticket number isn't very useful externally, but it acts as a link between the forum and our internal system.
4. New issues are regularly prioritized and scheduled.
5. Once there is a resolution, we post back to the thread to let everyone know the issue has been addressed.
6. The thread is closed to indicate the issue is resolved.

I admit that some of this process is intentionally vague.

For example, we do not typically communicate priority and status. There are a few different reasons for this, but the most commonly it's either because the issue is multi-faceted, requiring things like firmware fixes that are outside of our direct control, or because the fix is part of a larger, unannounced feature that we're developing for a future SDK release.

Another thing you point out is our somewhat nebulous responses. Sometimes we have to adjust our schedules to align with product releases, which experience their own schedule changes, so we're reluctant to promise dates when we know they may move. There are also cases where a feature enhancement is going into the next as-of-yet-unannounced major SDK release, so we have to keep it under wraps.

Personally, I prefer to be as open as possible with our developers. After all, a lot of the work we've done in the past couple of years has been in direct response to reports and requests in these forums. I can say pretty definitively that a public facing bug tracking system won't happen anytime soon, but we're always open to suggestions for ways we can improve our communication with you.

From what I have seen the Connect IQ guys are pretty good .. the other Garmin groups, sorry they get an F on my report card.
Good thing that I am not their teacher.

The biggest issue .. testing. There appears to be very very little of that going on in the firmware areas of their products, an area that impacts the
users pretty heavily. So .. there is definitely a lot of work to do.

I think it's already a big improvement that the Connect IQ Bug forum exists, it was not so long ago that bugs were posted in the general connect iq forum. The fact that the connect iq forums are actually monitored by people that are close to the connect iq development team is also a good thing (and I agree with vivoactivehrguy a lot better than the rest of the forum where it's pure user to user support)

It's a first good step in the right direction, but of course things can always further improve...

Personally I don't need to know the details how an issue is going to be fixed or what was wrong in the first place with the previous implementation, so (for me) the "we've got this crash addressed" and "we've corrected this issue in the documentation" is a perfectly fine answer for me.

I agree the other answers "I've got it reported." and "I've got a ticket created to investigate." are not very satisfying. Some of us being developers irl we all know that having a ticket created does not guarantee someone will actually look at that ticket at all...

It could be an improvement to update the ticket with several statusses without exposing any details (report the repriorization preferably with some kind of non-binding eta, in backlog, in active sprint, looked at it but cannot reproduce, it's not a bug, won't fix it, resolved and will be available in the next sdk version, etc...).

Where can I see the release notes for GCM (A & iOS) 3.16?

Hey,

The release notes on this release are very sparse. Unfortunately I cannot post any internal information other than confirming that your issue has been addressed as with your other post. Here are the links to each app in the app store. The "release notes" (if we can call them that) are in the What's New section for the apps:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garmin-connect-mobile/id583446403?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.garmin.android.apps.connectmobile&hl=en

I realize that this is likely not what you are looking for in the release notes and not very helpful to your situation as a developer, but I am not able to release any other specifics.

Thank you,
-Coleman

Re my "The GPS time on the VA HR runs 5% slow" bug report , it's good to know that

they have a fix planned in there release schedule

but isn't it a bit premature to close the Forum thread before the bug is confirmed or the fix is released?

Hi can any one tell me why and how to configure my 520 . I keep doing course for my riding and Garmin are out up to 50% on ascent.  The distance is about spit on give or take a few k . The ride I did today on garmin courses was meant to be 3950 elevation but was only 2444 quite a difference. This has been going on for yrs now . Strava route is about 2% out but that's with other guys reading of Strava. Both systems as far as I'm aware use Google maping,  and use there own programme which is overlaid . 

Come on Garmin answers if you will please 

This is a forum for 3rd party app development, and not for base functionality.  For that, it's best to ask in the product forum.

https://forums.garmin.com/sports-fitness/cycling/f/edge-520-520-plus.

You can also contact Garmin support at support.garmin.com/.../

Notice you are responding to a 4 year old post and things have changed where in the current forum SW, there is now a Bug Reports section, where others can "vote" to indicate they see a problem too, others can see the bug repots in one place, and maybe offer solutions.  There is also a bug report wiki that indicates what needs to be included in a bug report, with a method to reproduce it being important in most cases.

https://forums.garmin.com/developer/connect-iq/w/wiki/5/bug-reports-faq