Reporting a Problem
What to include so a problem can be fixed quickly, and how to follow one you have reported.
Utilities, Bug Reports. Where to tell us something is wrong.
What to Include
A report that gets fixed quickly has four things in it.
What you did, step by step, in enough detail that somebody else can do the same. "Edited a product" is not reproducible. "Opened a product, changed the price on the Pricing tab, pressed Save Changes" is.
What you expected to happen. This matters more than it sounds. Half of reported problems are a disagreement about what the right behaviour is, and knowing what you expected settles it immediately.
What actually happened, including the exact wording of any message. A screenshot of an error is worth more than a description of it.
How often. Every time, or once? On one product or all of them? A problem that happens every time is usually easy. One that happened once is usually about particular data.
Screenshots
Attach them. Include the whole window rather than cropping to the error, because the surrounding page often contains the clue: which product, which order, which tab you were on.
Error References
If the shop showed you an error with a reference code, include it. It lets the matching entry be found in the logs directly rather than searched for by time.
What Happens Next
The report gets a status: new, in progress, needs more information, or resolved. You can see it change on your own report, and you will be asked directly if something is unclear.
When it is resolved, the resolution notes explain what was actually wrong, whether it is live yet, and whether there is anything you need to do.
Urgent Things
A shop that cannot take orders, a checkout that fails for everybody, a payment processor that has stopped: say so in the report and use the support contact as well. A bug report is a queue, not an alarm.
Before Reporting
Two checks that resolve a good proportion of reports in under a minute.
Reload the page properly, with a hard refresh. A surprising number of odd behaviours are an old version of a page still loaded in a browser after an update.
Try it in a private window. That rules out an extension, a cached file, or a stale login, which between them cause more reported faults than anything in the shop.
Things That Are Not Faults
Worth knowing, because they are reported often.
A report not matching your order list, which is covered in Which Report Answers What. A feature missing from your admin, which is usually a plan or a feature switch, covered in What Your Plan Includes. And a customer's order history looking incomplete, which is almost always two email addresses, covered in Customers.