Michelle, My understanding of how BMC decides if a bug is important enough to be fixed/worked on has to to with the number of customers that have reported the bug, and how much pressure they individually and collectively apply to BMC to try to get a resolution. ( Sure there are other factors like the design goal for the next version and if the feature in question will even be moved into the next version at all too. )
<My_Vision> My suggestion of hosting an independent bug tracking list would be to allow customers to share their experiences with each other. So that when a bug is identified by a customer other customers could try to reproduce the issue and also report the problem to BMC in a consistent way. So when an issue is a real issue for lots of customers BMC might hear the same thing from multiple support contracts and prioritize the effort to resolve the problem accordingly. I in no way expect such a customer effort to actually alter, or be a direct contributor or consumer, of any part of the existing BMC support process. Frankly I would rather then spend more time on fixing the bugs than trying to alter their applications to deal with a customer maintained "bugzilla" or other such software variants. I was basically think a community (like ARSList) specifically geared for Bug tracking. Hopefully it would contain a list of BMC Bug ID(s) that customers get when they report the issue. And if we can all be more aware of the existing Bug ID's then we can actually report another incident and reference an existing BMC Bug ID. And help reduce the total number of "duplicate" Bug ID's that get created in BMC's world. Now it would be fantastic if such a community effort could also develop a single (or maybe one pre bug) application that would allow other users (and BMC) to import the application and "push a button" to preform the test and evaluate the current functionality of the system. Yes, it gets very complicated when the bug is not limited to just workflow. (Like Import tool, or Admin Tool, or User Tool Vs. Mid-Tier type bugs.) But I still think it can be done. It would simply add more requirements to the testing environment for the application to work. And when it is more API specific, then sample code should be supplied to be able to reproduce the issue. Having the community create such a "Test this bug this way" message for BMC might help them to more quickly understand the real issue and skip over some of the misunderstandings that we all have experienced with Tech support. The only points of contact in the process would be individuals reviewing the community bug list and testing them on their environment(s) and when they can reproduce the bug, reporting it to BMC as that they are effected by that bug. If the community application was constructed in a way that would allow for outbound notifications when the community bug is "fixed" then it could also notify those who identified themselves as affected by the bug at that point too. ( Dependent on the feature set of the application used to track this stuff for the community. ) <really_a_pipe_dream> And it would be fantastic if BMC could actually let us develop such an ARS application for them. The could host a Server Cluster that they let a few "outside" developers build/work with and we all could get real accounts on the system. Who knows, they could even do performance testing on that instance. We would have a real system with 100's, 1000's of real users using real applications that are designed to help BMC better understand and meet the needs of their customers. And if BMC would not be willing to do such a great undertaking... maybe a partner would be able to do it? [ Fishing for some help here... Anyone with an Internet accessible ARS server with some bandwidth to burn? ] </really_a_pipe_dream> The point is that it would be the community working for the needs of the community to "help BMC help the community". I know all of this is not a novel idea, but most activists are not original thinkers either. They simply motivate others to take actions to improve a specific topic of interest. I am interested in seeing fewer bugs in BMC products and I think we all can make a big impact in that topic if we are willing to work hard enough. :) </My_Vision> -- Carey Matthew Black Remedy Skilled Professional (RSP) ARS = Action Request System(Remedy) Love, then teach Solution = People + Process + Tools Fast, Accurate, Cheap.... Pick two. On 3/10/07, Lucero, Michelle - IST contractor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Me, too. But I have a question about the whole process. Is there going to be a scheduled push whether manual or automated to send the bugs to BMC Remedy? Would their bug number scheme be different? How would we know if/when their fixed? ...so many questions
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