I know it's hard. Really. I do. I've done it. I've talked to clients who can't communicate what the problem is and it's awful.
If your trouble-ticket is unclear or ambiguous I can't fix it. I can't even understand _what_ the problem is. I can't even understand where to start _looking_ to determine what the problem is on my own.
If you say I clicked on `Generate File` and those two words don't exist _any where_ on the screen. I can't help. I'ma delete yer ticket.
@401matthall We almost need like a dashcam utility. Something happens and the user hits the button. We get a replay of the last 30 seconds of user activity prior to that moment.
I don't know how to securely manage all of this but it's wild what we put each other through going both ways in tech.
The software didn't record the action and the user didn't know there was going to be a quiz either.
Yeah, that's all fair.
I know there've been 'heat-map' JS libraries for eons but we've never made use of anything like that.
This is another one of those _key_ points. I complain because I'm a dev. The reality is... If we _cared_ about ongoing customer/client support we _would_ track each action the user takes.
Then we could rebuild the history of actions. Diagnosis would be _wildly_ simplified.
Guess how much data we track about user action?
@401matthall I don't know how to capture that without big privacy concerns. I know they'd ask me some uncomfortable questions at work if I tried to implement that but I don't know a proper alternative.
I hate putting in those bug reports myself because I know they're bad. "I clicked on Go and it didn't go." With no error message or anything else, I don't have anything else useful to report as a user. That's all the information I have and it's still crap.
Yeah, depending on the nature of the application I imagine there are concerns. Tracking 'commands' sent to the server or webworkers (if you hate yourself 👀) should be something we can do without capture _all_ of the data involved in the command.
We would at least know _what_ the user did if not the _exact_ context of the data moved, transformed, etc.
So, really, just _audit_ logging of user actions. Nothing super invasive.
jay_chi
Matt Hall
Urzl