Bug Reporter

At NASA Trained Monkeys we’ve been using a tool to make it easier for our clients to send us their feedback.

This tool is called Bug Reporter and it’s essentially an overlay that will appear to the right of the screen with two buttons: one takes you to the help menu and the other one takes you to the File a new bug interface.

What can you do with it?

Bug Reporter provides you with a simple, easy to use interface for reporting bugs back to the developer. The main target of this tool is to help during the development stages of your app. Wether it be reporting undesirable behavior or broken layouts Bug Reporter will help you get the feedback to the right person.

To file a bug all you have to do is fill in the title information and tap on Report. That’s it!

Of course there’s a lot more you can do: for example, add a detailed description of what the problem is, or attach a screenshot of the current application state.

For those cases where a picture is worth more than a thousand words you can even anotate on the screenshot you attached (incredibly useful for when describing exactly what you want with words will be tricky)

What services does it integrate with?

Right now we support two main ways to send feedback:

• Email

• Pivotal Tracker

If you are using email the default email interface will pop up when you tap on report and an already filled up email will be sent as soon as you tap Send.

If you are using Pivotal Tracker then the app will ask you for your credentials and file the bug for you. If you are worried about security: the reporter will save the access token, not your email and password.

How can i use it in my project?

In order for Bug Reporter to work you need to follow these steps:

• Download the embedded framework from here

• Add the -ObjC and -all_load flags to the Other Linker Flags option in your project Build Settings

• Add the following iOS SDK frameworks and libraries

 CFNetwork.framework
MessageUI.framework
MobileCoreServices.framework
QuartzCore.framework
SystemConfiguration.framework
libz.dylib

In your appDelegate, right after adding the rootViewController to the window write the following

  NTReporter *rep = [NTReporter sharedReporter];

  rep.bugReportingType = BugReportingTypeEmail;

In your appDelegate, right after adding the rootViewController to the window write the following (you can get the Pivotal Tracker project id from the pivotal tracker webpage, it appears at the end of the URL when you are viewing your project stories)

NTReporter *rep = [NTReporter sharedReporter];

rep.bugReportingType = BugReportingTypePivotalTracker;

rep.trackerProjectId = @"358317";

rep.trackerShouldIncludeAttachments = YES; // Some accounts 

don't allow attachments

What’s next?

We are planning on adding support for more tracking providers: Basecamp, Fogbugz, etc; providing iPad support is also in our priority list.

If you need a particular tracker covered just leave a comment or contact us via email or twitter and we’ll try to help you out

Give it a try and let us know what you think

Download the framework here. Remember, right now it only supports iPhone and iPod apps.