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Crash Reporting

Essential collaboration features for your mobile monitoring tools

If you're looking to help your mobile team work efficiently, then certain collaboration features are key. Find out which ones to look out for in this post.

Collaboration is a cornerstone of success in the world of mobile app development. The integration of ideas and expertise across team members ensures the creation of innovative and efficient apps. 

It’s important for mobile teams to have tooling that improves communication, enforces responsibility, and streamlines workflows. In this post, we’ll cover several key collaboration features to look for in your mobile monitoring solution.

Crash tagging

Crash tagging is valuable because of its ability to pinpoint responsibility. When you use crash tagging, you get unparalleled visibility into which team and individual team members are accountable for any crash that occurs in your app. This level of insight is invaluable because it ensures that crashes are addressed both promptly and efficiently. 

In Embrace, crashes are tagged with customer-defined rules uploaded from the CODEOWNERS file in GitHub. With this information, each frame within the crash stack trace is reviewed using this set of rules and then tagged for any matching rules. The result is a crash that’s fully accounted for by you and your team.

crash-tagging-owners

You can see an example of this in the image above. The crash is reviewed and tagged accordingly. Consequently, it’s determined that the first crash in this crash list is the responsibility of “Android team B” while the third crash is the responsibility of a single member on the team — John Doe.

This tagging allows enhanced collaboration because all team members are aware of who is responsible for specific crashes. This means less time spent figuring out who needs to handle crashes and a faster response time in solving them.

Notes

Notes are beneficial to have in the crash resolution process because these eliminate any potential ambiguity. When your mobile team can add context and updates alongside the crash data, then this empowers other team members with the right knowledge.

Crash notes work by allowing your team to add a short note to any crash that has surfaced in the dashboard. Other members can respond to comments and create a clear thread, noting the contributor and date of the comment.

crash-list-with-note

The image above shows what it looks like when you add a comment. Once submitted, comments are denoted by a small blue circle with the number of comments in the thread over the note icon.

Many crashes are difficult to solve and this process is frustrating enough as is. The last thing you need is the rest of your mobile team searching for relevant information when you hand an issue off to the responsible party. With crash notes, you avoid unnecessary stress and time loss.

Jira tickets

For mobile teams who rely on Jira for project management, having this integration with their mobile monitoring tool is vital. This is because the integration eliminates the need to jump back-and-forth between separate platforms and gives you the ability to streamline your workflow for better efficiency.

In the image below, you can see how the Embrace dashboard integrates with Jira. We enable the creation and linkage of Jira tickets directly within the dashboard. You can do this by clicking the Jira icon shown in the right corner of the “Issue Management” window. From here, you’re given the option to create a ticket or link a ticket.

add-JIRA-ticket-functionality

This means that you’re not only streamlining your issue resolution, you’re also ensuring that your team can have a collaborative process without losing any vital information.

Snooze/re-open issues

The ability to snooze and re-open crashes allows mobile teams the flexibility to open and investigate an issue, assess its current priority, and then determine if it’s something they want to address now or in the future.

The snooze/re-open functionality is a crucial feature within a mobile monitoring toolset, allowing users to temporarily set aside a crash for later attention. This capability enables teams to efficiently manage their workflow, ensuring that resources are allocated where they are needed most, without losing track of critical issues.

crash-details-issue-management-open-ticket

In the image above, you can see your options for the status of any given crash. From here, users can select the option to snooze a crash. You can then customize how long the snooze lasts by selecting an event count or a duration.

crash-details-snooze-event-count

If you snooze a crash by event count, you’ll enter the number as shown in the image above.

crash-details-snooze-duration

If you snooze by duration, you can select from several time increments shown in the image above.

Without this functionality, mobile teams run the risk of inefficiency, potentially wasting valuable time and resources on issues that may not require immediate attention. Without this snooze feature, you also run the risk of diverting attention away from a crash and forgetting to return to it. The snooze feature ensures that you can prioritize effectively.

Role-based access control (RBAC)

For many enterprise organizations, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is valuable because it sets clear guidelines and allows control over sensitive information.

RBAC is a crucial set of features that provide administrators with the capability to assign specific permissions to users based on their designated roles within an organization. This ensures that each member of a team has the appropriate level of access and authorization to perform their necessary tasks.

RBAC-users-teams-access
RBAC-users-and-teams

In the images above, you can see how you can easily assign members with “regular” or “full access” and group members into teams for easier project permission.

Bug reporting

Bug reporting is a critical process in mobile app development that involves identifying, reporting, and managing issues within your app. These bugs encompass a range of unexpected behaviors, errors, or flaws that can affect the functionality, performance, or user experience of a mobile app.

As a team, it’s important to have a thorough pre-release testing process to deliver an exceptional mobile app. Finding a tool that’s cost effective, easy to use, and collaborative makes this process as efficient as possible.

In the image above, you can see some of the data that Embrace collects. The dashboard shows a summarized look at all of your bugs and auto-captured crashes in one centralized place. With the use of this tool alongside our other collaboration features, solving issues in your app has never been easier. 

Build better mobile experiences with tools that foster collaboration

For mobile teams, effective collaboration isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It saves time, conserves team resources, and alleviates stress. By minimizing the time spent on administrative tasks and issue resolution, teams can redirect their focus toward what truly matters: app innovation.

With the right collaborative tools in place, the development process becomes a well-oiled machine, allowing teams to drive forward with efficiency. This is why it’s essential to have the right features by your side. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Embrace, here’s an overview of our product as well as which tools we integrate with.  

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