Bugzilla is an external issue tracking system used internally by Waze technical teams.
Waze Bugzilla is partially open to the community with different access level permissions in order to make the status of bugs and feature requests visible.
Structure
We have two classifications in which the items are organized:
- Internal - accessible to Waze staff only
- Public - accessible to all with different permission levels
Most items will be in the public area, but some will be restricted and visible to staff only. We'd usually want to be transparent, but sometimes we are limited by privacy and security concerns.
Each classification contains two products - the general Waze client and services product, and the Waze Map Editor product.
Permissions
View only
Anyone can access and see all of the public bugs with no need to login. Internally, we can mark some of the comments as private for staff only, but the rest of the details are publicly visible.
Comment & Vote
This permission level requires a login. A login requires submitting an application.
- At this time, only the following will be eligible for a login:
- Local / Global champs
- Experts / Coordinators
- Editor/App beta-testers
The users in this permission level have the right to vote on 25 items they think are the most critical, and to add comments with additional information about bugs and features.
Bug Submitters
Bug Submitters have permission to post new bugs and are hand-picked by Waze.
General guidelines
Voting
- Vote on what you think are the most pressing issues we need to address. Votes are your method to express your concerns. We deeply care about the concerns of our community, we consider the vote count, and try to prioritize our development process according to it. There are other things we are forced to consider such as development dependencies, infrastructure issues, business development, things that are easier / harder to develop, etc. However - your votes are your voice and it's important to us. Use them wisely.
Commenting
If you have the appropriate permission level, you are welcome to provide more information using the commenting system.
- Bugs - ways to reproduce them, description of environments in which they occur, examples.
- Requirements - specific use cases which are difficult to perform with the current implementation.
We are trying to keep everything very focused. Try to refrain from adding irrelevant information such as off-topic discussion, reproduction of other issues, requests, opinions, social interaction, etc - this things are what the forums are for.
Duplicates
One thing one should be careful when managing an issue tracking system is duplicate entries. Before asking our experts to open a new bug report, please verify that it hasn't been already reported using the search tools.
Public Products
Map Editor Bugzilla
These guidelines are specific to the map editor product.
Issue types
The Issue Type field says whether an issue is Bug or Requirement. Bug means something that should already work but is not working correctly, a requirement means a feature we'd like to see implemented.
Prioirty ratings
Priority Rating is the ranking we set for the issue. The scale is 1-1000, 1000 is we're-not-going-to-sleep-until-it's-done, 1 is maybe-someday. We set the prioirty according to all the considerations we take into account, and may change it when the conditions change.
Status Workflow
We change status from UNCONFIRMED to CONFIRMED or another status as soon as we go over an issue to make sure we understand what it means. Sometimes we will change the status to NEED INFO which means, uhm, that we need more info - usually specific steps to reproduce a bug. IN PROGRESS means we are currently working on this. RESOLVED means we fixed the bug and deployed it to the beta environment, VERIFIED means it does not reoccur after deployment.
Build number
When submitting a bug, it is important to note what was the active editor sub-version the bug was identified in. In the beta editor you can see the currently deployed version in the top left corner. v1.2-32 means version 1.2, and the build number is 32.