I think the problem is not that the attachment function can't be found, but that reporters underrate importance of sample documents.


@Edwin Sharp
Suggestions? Mockups?

See for example bug 109011.
Couldn't find more complaints although I'm sure I encountered more.
Will try to prepare a mockup.

(In reply to Edwin Sharp from comment #2)
> See for example bug 109011.
Yes, I see such comments from time to time, but that's a user-problem. To mee it seems impossible not to see the "Add an Attachment" button on the way to the "Submit" button.
When we think we have Bugzilla idiot proof they will send better idiots ;-)
(I like that saying, but I do not want to  affront anybody)

> Will try to prepare a mockup.
Fine. May be some little more prominent hint how valuable attached sample documents are might only help some users to find this item.

Created attachment 81349 [details]
suggestion for add file

Not a big change but maybe a little bit easier for reporter to understand...

I do not think that such a big modification in BZ will be necessary. But seeing Edwin's Mockup I had an idea what might be the problem for inexperienced bug reporters: 

May be they want to contribute a "sample document" or a "screenshot", but they only find a button to "Add an Attachment". For us it seems crystal clear that that button is for attaching sample documents or similar, but may be not everybody can understand that? Especially because there is no Help link?

So as a first step I suggest simply to trail a short hint behind the button, see following Mockup.

Severity "MINOR Enhancement", I don't think that many users suffer from this problem. But nevertheless a useful suggestion.

@Rob:
What do you think?

Created attachment 81350 [details]
Mockup for more simple improvement

Please see comment above.

And may be a similar hint would be useful behind table heading "Attachments" in the attachments table of existing Bug reports? May be some newbies have difficulties to understand for what these files are?

Most other field labels show a tooltip, when hovered with the mouse, and they link to https://issues.apache.org/ooo/page.cgi?id=fields.html#short_desc. But the label "Attachment" has is not. So one improvement can be to add these to label "Attachment" to.

Another improvement can be to change the button text from "Add an attachment" to "Upload attachment".

Something to keep in mind:  We're not going to rewrite Bugzilla.  And we're very unlikely to apply and maintain custom patches to the Bugzilla UI.

That leaves four basic approaches:

1) If something is already accessible to BZ admins, we can adjust settings.

2) If we need to improve documentation on pages that link to BZ, so users know better what we're looking for, we can do that.

For example, maybe this page should be better known (though it is lengthy):

http://www.openoffice.org/qa/ooQAReloaded/Docs/QA-Reloaded-BasicRules.html


3) We can "wrap" the submission process with another webpage that simplifies the experience for users.  For example, this out-of-date page:

http://www.openoffice.org/qa/issue_handling/submission_gateway.html

4) Send UI suggestions to www.bugzilla.org