Hello Halli Rosenbach ,

Unfortunately this error is not providing very much information.

Could you please post the full error stack-

Also, it might help if you could let us know what exactly are you doing when the error message appears.

Is this happening to all files?- or to just one in particular?

Are you translating in 'Single file' mode or a 'project'

Hi Steven,

Paul mentioned somewhere that Studio 2019 sends error information to SDL whenever it encounters an error (if the user has enrolled in a Studio "improvement program").

If the error stack is included in this information, then SDL might be able to eliminate the step where you or another SDL employee asks the user to send the error stack.

Studio might, for example, query SDL for a unique error number before it sends the error information and then display this error number to the user.

If this change were made to Studio, then the user would just have to provide the unique error number in order for you or anyone else at SDL to access all of the information in your database for that particular error.

Just an idea that might make chasing down errors easier for everyone involved, especially the user :-)

Best regards,
Bruce Campbell
ASAP Language Services

Hi Paul,

Done: community.sdl.com/.../display-unique-error-number-to-user-for-troubleshooting

Although I have more faith in you than I do in the "Ideas" site, which might be a round filing cabinet for all I know ...

Best regards,
Bruce Campbell
ASAP Language Services

Hmmm, to be honest, I don't quite get why should USERS come up with such ideas...
This is clearly an SDL's software architect's role to set this up... and in fact I would expect this to be already set up, right together with implementing the background reporting. Why would anyone NOT implement it in such way?

Bruce Campbell said:

in the "Ideas" site, which might be a round filing cabinet for all I know ...

Exactly my feelings about the Ideas...
Most of the ideas are apparently completely out of scope of the community developers (in other words, the reported bugs, shortcomings and feature improvements must be fixed/implemented by the core team, not the community developers), i.e. it is effectively a "Rundordner"...

Evzen Polenka said:

Hmmm, to be honest, I don't quite get why should USERS come up with such ideas...

Users don't have to... and many of the things users "come up with" are already on a backlog in development.  But if users do have ideas then the place for them, despite your views on it, is the ideas site.  In this way anything we have not already got planned can be considered, and if we have already planned them it's just a good place to tick them off the list rather than have the idea buried in the forums somewhere.

This is really all about trying to provide a better engagement with our users and whilst I know you'll probably have a much better idea and process for doing just about everything we do, I think there is value here and in an organisation like this with more than one set of objectives I like it.

Evzen Polenka said:

and in fact I would expect this to be already set up, right together with implementing the background reporting

Of course you would... you don't have as many other things to do!

Thanks Paul,

I wasn't sure whether the Ideas site was actively monitored, quickly reviewed once in a while, or whether, say, only Ideas with more than 10 votes were checked ;-)

By the way, I was thinking of "unique" as specific to an incident, so that if the same error occurred twice, then a different error number would be displayed to the user each time.

Although the "generic error" might be the same for many incidents, other information collected from the error stack or about the user's Studio settings or system configuration might also be helpful for a specific incident.

Using a unique number also leaves the door open for a more flexible data collection system in the future.

With that said, I really have no idea whether Evzen is correct when he says SDL should have designed the system this way in the first place. I'm not in the field anymore.

Even though I know other programs collect data and display generic error codes, I am not aware of any programs that give the user a unique number that can link their particular incident to the specific database record that was collected for that incident -- while maintaining user anonymity in the database itself.

If other programs are moving in the same direction, then good. That will give SDL more of an incentive to do the same, which means the days of asking users to send error stacks will soon be over :-)

Best regards,
Bruce Campbell
ASAP Language Services

Thanks Paul,

I wasn't sure whether the Ideas site was actively monitored, quickly reviewed once in a while, or whether, say, only Ideas with more than 10 votes were checked ;-)

By the way, I was thinking of "unique" as specific to an incident, so that if the same error occurred twice, then a different error number would be displayed to the user each time.

Although the "generic error" might be the same for many incidents, other information collected from the error stack or about the user's Studio settings or system configuration might also be helpful for a specific incident.

Using a unique number also leaves the door open for a more flexible data collection system in the future.

With that said, I really have no idea whether Evzen is correct when he says SDL should have designed the system this way in the first place. I'm not in the field anymore.

Even though I know other programs collect data and display generic error codes, I am not aware of any programs that give the user a unique number that can link their particular incident to the specific database record that was collected for that incident -- while maintaining user anonymity in the database itself.

If other programs are moving in the same direction, then good. That will give SDL more of an incentive to do the same, which means the days of asking users to send error stacks will soon be over :-)

Best regards,
Bruce Campbell
ASAP Language Services

Bruce Campbell said:

Even though I know other programs collect data and display generic error codes, I am not aware of any programs that give the user a unique number that can link their particular incident to the specific database record that was collected for that incident

Mozilla products - see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Breakpad

And here you can see the stats of submitted reports: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/

Bruce Campbell said:

If other programs are moving in the same direction, then good. That will give SDL more of an incentive to do the same, which means the days of asking users to send error stacks will soon be over :-)

Probably not as simple as that.  You'd be assuming that everyone works online all the time, and that they agreed to participate in the feedback program and always send this data back.  Neither are a given and we still have to support our users whether they agree to this or not.