Use Tickets to Capture Qualitative Tester Feedback

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Tester Communications

When your beta program is active, there are multiple modes of communications you need to serve your customers:

• Manager to All Testers: send announcements to all of your testers to keep them updated (e.g. share a link to the product manual)
• Manager to a subset of Testers: send a bulk update or follow up to a group of testers that share a common criteria (e.g. give kudos to your top performers) 
• Manager to a specific Tester: having a one-one conversation with the tester
• Tester to Manager: a tester reaching out to manager for a specific reason
• Tester to Tester: testers helping other testers in a specific topic (e.g. sharing how they solved a problem)

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All these modes of communication normally happen in a group setting such as beta testing. And Stomio can help you manage all of them. In this article, we will focus on one mode: Tester to Manager.

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Tickets: Tester to Manager Communication

Testers can initiate a conversation with Managers using Tickets in Stomio. There are two ways a Tester can start a ticket

• When they execute on their tasks
• Quick ticket directly from Stomio

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When a Tester is executing their task, they can start a ticket by clicking on `Open a ticket` on the bottom-left corner of their screen. This will initiate a ticket that is associated with that specific step.

Another way to start a ticket flow is for the Tester to log into their account, click on `Tickets` on the top navigation bar, then click on `Open a ticket` on the screen. 

Regardless of how the tester initiates the flow, a Ticket has below main component:

• Beta Name: each ticket has two status: Open or Solved. By default, all tickets are open. Closing a ticket can be done by the manager or the tester by clicking on the ticket status on changing it.
• Ticket Type: testers have the option to report on 4 main types of tickets:

Ticket Operations

Once a ticket is created, you can perform the following actions on each ticket

• Change status: each ticket has two status: Open or Solved. By default, all tickets are open. Closing a ticket can be done by the manager or the tester by clicking on the ticket status on changing it

• Assign a ticket to a Manager: when you run a beta program with teammates, you can assign a ticket to a teammate (or yourself!) so your team divides and conquers the tickets flowing from your testers. Click on `Assignees` and you’ll see a list of managers for that beta. Simply select the managers you want to assign the ticket to and they’ll receive a notification

• Change ticket type: in the same side panel you get to assign a ticket to a teammate, changing ticket type is as simple as clicking on the drop down and selecting another ticket type. This could be needed if a tester started the ticket as a question and it turned out to be a great idea for future product improvement.

• Delete a ticket: sometimes you need to delete a ticket because it was filed by error or the information provided is invalid. Click on the desired ticket, on the right panel find the `Delete ticket` button. Once you click on it, you’ll be prompted to confirm the action. Once confirmed, the ticket is deleted and can’t be retrieved.

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Managing your tickets at scale

After you launch your beta program, you should expect a lot of tickets to be reported by your testers. The number of tickets will increase exponentially if you launch more than one beta program at the same time. Stomio helps you stay on top of your tickets by giving you a number of filters to quickly get to the tickets you want to view:

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• Beta Filter: you can filter your tickets by a specific beta so you can focus on that program

• Ticket Type Filter: you can also filter your tickets by their type: I’m Stuck, Bugs, Questions, or Ideas. This is helpful to prioritize your work (e.g. unstuck your testers first then check out bugs) 

• Ticket State Filter: each ticket can be `Open` or `Closed`. By default, all tickets are Open until the Tester or Manager closes the ticket because it’s resolved or no longer valid. This helps you clean the view by focusing on open tickets only

• Ticket Assignee Filter: when you run a beta program with teammates, you can assign a ticket to a teammate (or yourself!) so your team divides and conquers the tickets flowing from your testers

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