Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 13 Jun 2019

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From YouTube: Community demo - GitHub issue process with SharePoint developer issues

Description

This community call demo is taken from the SharePoint development monthly community call recording on 13th of June 2019. In this video, Andrew Connell (Voitanos) explains the process of using SharePoint Dev Documentation Github repository (sp-dev-docs) issue list for submitting issues around SharePoint development.

sp-dev-docs issue list is for getting your development oriented issues reported for Microsoft - https://github.com/SharePoint/sp-dev-docs/issues.

Presenter - Andrew Connels (Voitanos) - @andrewconnell

Full details on the community call from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/blogs/sharepoint-dev-community-pnp-general-sp-dev-sig-recording-13th-of-june-2019/

More details on the SharePoint dev community calls from http://aka.ms/sppnp.

A

Everybody, my name is Andrew Connell I am I. One of the roles I serve on the on the PMP team, it's kind of like the the issue list, the main issue list for SharePoint devs as like the bouncer or like the moderator or whatever you want to say. So this is the issue list that we're talking about we're talking about the SP dev Doc's issue list. Now the I want to just talk some of the stuff.

A

You may already know some stuff, you may not know some stuff may be new to new people, so I'm gonna try and cover a couple different things here and I'm part of this I'm part of reasons I'm covering this is because we've done this in the past, but we've had some people. I know we had some comments last time around, while I was presenting some stuff and I want to cover a couple things or address a couple things that came up.

A

First of all, this issue list is like the main place for developers for SharePoint developers. To go to that, you can go to ask questions. You can submit a bug. You can say you have an issue with something and it's the main place to go, though, where you were where the topic that you're submitting on doesn't have like another home so like, for example, we have another repo that we can take a look at. If you look at the ESPY I think it's provisioning.

A

So that nope- that's not it so I'll just find that really quick if I come over here to the SharePoint, org and I, look for provisioning that SP provisioning service. So here, like the provisioning service and what you'll see is that some people have been we've had some questions being posted to the SP, dev Docs issue list, and so what we've done as these have come in I'm trying to find I'll see if I can find one that we did the other day. Maybe this one? This is a good one, just kind of yeah.

A

So what you'll see is that some people have posted this to somewhere else like the SP dev, SP, dev Docs issue list, and what we've done is. We are trying to keep things kind of organized and different repositories that we have in the SharePoint and the SharePoint github organization are considered like supported things. So you know issues that you have with the SharePoint framework or with add-ins or with SharePoint Online or SharePoint on-prem. Those things are like supportive things. Those are things that Microsoft need.

A

You know wants to fix if there's an issue or needs to help if there's there's something going on, but other services that we have, such as, like the reusable react controls that Elio spends a lot of time with, for both the property pane or your react based webparts or at the present time, like the provisioning service or any of the powershell, the PNP PowerShell stuff that Aaron and spends a lot of time on some of these things may not be supported by Microsoft, and so, when an issue comes in we're trying to make sure that those issues are going to this repository, where they really should be going so like in this case here, this individual had submitted a an issue about the the provisioning service, and so what we did is we, our you'll, see I'm posting this kind of canned a message here, but what it does is we're able to transfer these issues from one issue list over to another one, and so, if you see we don't I would encourage you to please try to put it in there in the right repository.

A

But when things get moved around, it's not somebody passing the bucket. Just you know those issues kind of make sense in another spot, like everything related. The provisioning service really should be going in this issue list.

A

So that's one thing I want to cover, if you're not sure which one to put it in, you can always do a search by just going to the SharePoint org doing a search inside this find repository and go ahead and post the do a search to find where something would be so maybe P and P core by their site score, there's different ones that you can that you can submit to, and if you can't find it, if you use SP dev Doc's, that's fine, we can, we can go through.

A

We can rehome it if we need to re-home it and send it somewhere else. Another thing that I want to cover here is just really quickly just to explain how the issue list works on the. Let me go back to my issue list for this issue list here. Let me explain a little bit about a bot that we have that's running in the background here.

A

So in the background, one of the things we have this is a good example here is that when someone submits I'm, just gonna pick the first one that I see, we have a couple things that are set up, that automate the closing of certain issues and that's just to keep things kind of you know, keep things flowing in a good way, so we have two workflows that are running behind the scenes that are automating the issue list.

A

One of them is that when, let's say you submit a question like this individual submitted a question here and we had somebody- you know has responded to this person about asking a question or saying hey: we need more information, or something like that, and what we do is we tag it with. This needs author feedback label. Now what that does? Is that kicks off kind of like a timer, and it goes for a total of about 14 days.

A

The first thing that it goes through the first seven days is it's basically waiting for the original poster of the issue. We see us refer to that in the issue list as opie. So if the original poster of the issue, if they don't respond within seven days, then the issue gets tagged as stale. Now, let's see if I can just scroll through really quick and fine stale issue, usually there's always at least one there. We go no recent activity, so what the workflow does is it will then post a message here.

A

So let me jump down and show you the message that we get right here. It says the issues automatically be marked as stale, because it was marked as requiring author feedback in it there's no activity for seven days, so that's just to notify the person that it should be that they should respond to it there. We need more, more information here. So this is where I responded to them. um If they don't respond for another seven days, so a total time that's elapsed now is fourteen.

A

Then the issue is going to automatically be closed, because apparently the person posted the question. We need more information to help with it and there's really. No, if they're not gonna, you know, engage and kind of help to be able to close it then there's really no reason to leave the issue open. So we go ahead and close it. We can always reopen issues if we need to, but we go ahead and close it right away.

A

Another thing, too, that we do here, that's a good question: Vincent I, don't know that I, don't know the answer that if the original posters can reopen closed issues or not so I know those of you yeah.

B

So they cannot so, and it's actually from a tracking perspective, it's better that you open an aviation because interact is also internally in the everything is replicated automatically to our internal system. So if this, if the internally, we consider the issue being closed and then somebody would reopen the issue in Qatar that would actually make things complicated right right.

A

So yeah new shoes are definitely better if we've closed one. We think it's open I mean, of course, that there's sometimes we do go back and say you know. If we closed, it wasn't supposed to be closed and things weren't being tracked. Then, yes, I do go ahead and reopen those but I I know which ones are being tracked internally and we make sure that you know things don't get orphaned and we think it's open and Microsoft's looking at it, but they don't really know that because they think it was all closed.

A

So if the original poster does eventually going back to my scenario, if the original poster does go back and does answer, it does provide feedback. For example like this item right here, then what happened? What the bot does is.

A

It goes in and removes that needs author feedback, and it adds this label of needs attention and what that does is really just highlight to someone on the list that hey now we've got some things where people have responded, and now there's time for someone on the that knows something about this topic to jump in and help.

A

Another thing to that I want to cover briefly, is about that. You'll see these things for needs triage and what that what that does whenever a new issue is added to this list, which can happen in really in one of two ways either someone has manually come to the list and submitted an issue or like, let's see by chance. If this one is a good example, I know this one wasn't a good one when you submit a question in the SharePoint frame where the SharePoint documentation.

A

So if I go over to the SharePoint Docs and I scroll to the bottom of any page, you'll see this part about adding feedback, and if you submit a question down here, so let's just grab this then you'll see that some extra stuff gets added and we automatically will get a tag of triage. Now, this one's a little old, so the workflow hasn't kicked in just yet, but the it'll get a tag here or a label of needs triage.

A

What this is going to do, what we we take the triage label off once we have been able to give it a label, it doesn't mean that we have an answer for you, but we'd be able to give it a label and kind of classify it. I spend a lot of time on the issue list and I know some people have thought you know hey.

A

You said you triage tip and answer the question like well certain things like if it's column, formatting and list formatting a row and column formatting I, don't know that technology as well as someone like Chris Kent, does and so I will remove the triage label, I'll tag it as list formatting and then when chris has some spare time, and he has the chance to go in there and take a look at it.

A

Then he'll go in and take a look at he'll go in and take a look at the at the at the issue and he'll go through and respond to it or someone else can jump in and do it Vince it's got. A questioner says needs attention, equals needs attention from the contributors or the forum or from the broader community. So the answer on needs attention is saying is: is back to the original poster. The workflow is only looking at the original poster. That's one of the things where things can get a little screwy where like.

A

If we have like one person, submits a question and then other people chime in and start kind of, jumping on board and kind of kind of piggybacking on the question, if we go back and ask them like if I respond and say hey, we need to know what browser you're talking about what SharePoint environment you're talking about what version of SharePoint framework and if the original poster does not respond, but everyone else does that doesn't really count in terms of the workflow we just can't. We in the workflow just doesn't support that.

A

So yes, technically, that issue could automatically get closed, but we watch that I mean if I'm going through and commenting on it. I get a notification when something pops up when something gets closed and if someone responds with hey this shouldn't been closed. Yet those are the things we look at and say: oh, let me go back and let me reopen that I can remove the label. So it's it's a like an 8020 rule on the workflows. Some stuff may fall through the cracks, but we all always go back and fix it.

A

If we can't, when we can and when we are aware of it, now, there's another thing that I want to cover here and this one. This was kind of near and dear to me, because it came up last time and we had one person respond in the chat and I'm gonna I'm gonna try to be as diplomatic or as polite as I can with this, but I really want you to really keep in mind here that you know this. This issue list is not Microsoft paid support right.

A

If you have a premier account and you need to open up a ticket, you need to get out an engineer like sign to it and get it fixed or you have an outage or something that's. What paid support is. This is a community forum where people can go through and can ask questions so when you go over here to submit an issue, one of the things that we've done is we have this default kind of template form that we've set up here right has all the stuff in it.

A

You want to see what it looks like here's, the source of it. If you go to preview, you can see what a preview of the rendering is all set up here now. What we've done with this is we've tried to provide you with as much of a template for where you can submit your question and I'm, not gonna call anybody specific out, because, frankly, I don't know who who this person was. But last time we had somebody with had the feedback that said I'm not going to take all this time to fill this out.

A

If I you make me, do that I'm not going to send any questions, and let me just be as blunt as I possibly can what, but at the same time being as polite as I, can the people that are in here that are helping you are usually doing it as contributing their own time to do it like for me personally, I know: Chris, kids, the same way I'm just calling Chris and I out Paolo's it the same way both cameras, the same I'm calling I just bunch of name's David Warner's playing with all these people are contributing their own time nobody's getting paid to do this.

A

This is your free time that you can do where you can instead be spending time surfing reddit, if you don't provide enough information to make it easier for me to help you the ones that are going to get hey, wait a minute.

A

So if, if you, if you make it harder for me to answer your question, I'm, probably going to be more inclined to help someone else, who's made it easier to answer the question because they provided enough information. If you just go through and leave this entire forum, as is, and then post your entire, you know stacktrace in the title of the issue. You're, probably not gonna, get much help I. You need to be think about being respectful other people's times.

A

Help me help you think about it like that right same thing, like Rob, said it's the same as Stack Overflow. So let me just show you what is a good, a couple tips and tricks of when you're going through and you're creating an issue here so I'm gonna go through and create this issue that my coffee is called really bad issue, because this is something that Microsoft hasn't fixed. My god had actually found related issues. That's ridiculous!

A

But the said I'm saying my coffee is cold. Now a couple things want to show you here. First of all, this is all about. You know hey what should you do with this? Well delete this paragraph after reading? Hey it's an instruction guys, make it easy. You just delete it another thing: how do I check these boxes now? This is something that it seems like 99% of people miss on this. This is a cool capability that github does notice right here, I've, even added in an example to this.

A

If you want an item to get checked, you put the X like this. If you put the X inside that caught that thing, and you still have a little space setting right after it, it doesn't render as checked you get this weird kind of rendering here, but look if you actually left it. If you took the space out just like the example, one shows look at that we got a check box. That makes things easier if you want to delete all these. Hey, that's cool! If you want to leave this guy, that's cool!

A

You can do all that stuff right, I'm trying to channel my inner Chris Kent and my enthusiasm right now. This even has instructions on how to do it. Look if you just go through it. If you check his pocket and check with this it'll show up, it's checked right, so make life a little bit easier, oh yeah, by the way, delete this paragraph after reading. Okay, so we've read that we can move on. So this is a cool article idea expected behavior. What what did you expect to have happen?

A

What should have happened here tell me that my coffee should be hot right. My observed behavior I, listened to Chris Kent too much, and now it's cold steps to reproduce it. Let's go back in time and listen to Chris again write submission guidelines. You don't need any of this submission guidelines stuff. We can delete all of that and what do you have for an issue? Tada look at that it looks so much better I. It should have been hot expect, got it. Okay, observe I, listen to Chris ken too much, and now it's cold.

A

How do I reproduce it? Cool I can totally reproduce this. This is something that I can address, Mike and fix, but hey, maybe you've got some stuff with Kovac. I saw an issue that someone posted a minute ago with some code issues here and here's some cool things you can do with this. I can go through and put this little code fencing, but put this little single quote tick right here.

A

Right where is hold on really quick I had a simple snippet: let's grab right there, a little bit of JSON here, I can just post it in. It looks good right go over to the preview and take a look at it. No, it looks like crap, it doesn't look any kind of formatting like what I had before. That's not what we want, there's a cool way that you can do this if I come over here.

A

If you just have like a single line of forming that you want to do, that's fine, you can do it like that with a single tick, but check this out. If I come over here and I put three tips and I say it's and I just put that put three ticks like that and then put three ticks at the end of it and then I do the preview. ah Now it's formatted and it's got a nice kind of indentation the way it's set up and even better. Yet, let's go further with this.

A

If I tell it what the data type is like JSON tada, look at that I even got color formatting here and even we know all kinds of things we can do typescript and just do type TS or typescript. We could do JavaScript or Java Script. We can do PowerShell or PowerShell what about you. Gonna do something at the command line. Shell, alright, do the command shell just like this or you came in to C sharp for CS. All of these things that formats the code.

A

It makes it easier to read so like check this out if I come over here to this issue, I saw this one that popped up a few minutes ago, see how all this XML oh watch this. If I come over here, grab this issue, I'm gonna, edit it and we're gonna change this to be I'm, gonna fence it to go through like this, that that dot and I update the comment- and oh, isn't that easier to read it's so much easier to read: it's so much easier to consume instead of looking at it.

A

Well, first of all, it's XML, so it's not easy to read, and it's not fun, but that's much more! It's much more pleasant to read and understand how this works, so the more that you can do to make these issues easier for us to read other people to consume it's easier for other people to figure out. What's wrong, what what problem are you having? How can we help you with this?

A

If you want to see how to do all of these different kinds of formatting things, you can just do a quick little google, it on bing go illicit called github flavored markdown do a search for get up, flavored, markdown click on the very first link that you get right here. Tells you a whole bunch of stuff about how this works? What is markdown, how do you do it where you want to do a bulleted list? You could do it like this. You could have real numbers like this. Here's a numbers that look like this.

A

You can mix and match stuff talks about how to do hyperlinks talks about how to do all kinds of stuff is listed in here and in this piece right back up, you can even see part docs going straight from github on mastering markdown. Second, one even more details about this: how do you do images? How do you do lists?

A

How do you do headers and quotes, or how do you do code like see, there's the fence code or fence code with a specific language and even has a link in here somewhere that talks about the different versions of the different code that we can do. We do the same thing with the pull request as well. I come over and I want to open up a new pull request. Notice we have the. Where is it I? Don't have it Oh where's my issue?

A

Let's just go over here over to the code, github and I will show you the pull request template so here's the temple we use for a pull request same deal. What is it a content fix or is it a new item now? This is really slick when you submit a pull request, if you put in here now, you have to do for each one but see where it says, fixes issues or it partially does something or mentions this other one.

A

If you go through and you say fixes like, let me come over, let me come back to an issue where's, my coffee, oh I, didn't do anything with my coffee. Let's come back let's, let's just you know think that I'm gonna be doing it. Oh, my goodness, it remembered it. That's pretty cool good alright.

A

So what about this observe behavior that now watch this I can do cool links inside of this, if I say, like this references issue, number it's issues that serve that issue right there, so that is going to automatically hyperlink to straight to that issue and give us nice little details, but you do a pull request if you are going to if it closes. If an item, if I say closes that item right there, then when we go in first of all with that reference, it's gonna add that link to the reference link.

A

So if I go to this issue right now, if I created this, it would add a link inside of the history for that issue. To this item right here and if I submit this as a pull request and I submit the pin, the pull request gets merged. It'll automatically close the issue when the pull request is done. One little trick about this, you can do closes, you can do fixes. But if you do this- and you are closing multiple issues- you got it- you got to do them all individually.

A

Like this, you can't do like fixes. 23:12 github doesn't understand that all right, it doesn't understand, eat that these are all fixes. You have to do each one individually like that kind of a pain, but hey it's not that bad and before you ask no, as your DevOps doesn't do some of this stuff. These are github specific, like auto, close stuff. I found that out the hard way let's see is I can keep going. But let me see we just double checking me.

A

I didn't see anything from checks or we used to keep going that's or.

B

Great timing so, unfortunately, just to confirm we cannot get checks on the call right now. We've been working on the on that back-end on that phone, but there's a too many technical issues, so you can continue. We can, if there's any other technical questions or whatever we can have a chat on the I window. As you go through these things, checks demo will be recorded a separate one, unfortunately, and starting from August will be in teams platform. So that should help on these things as well. Cool.

A

Okay, so I will continue going while you work on on checks is back in. Is that what you're saying so.

B

Checks demo will pay, cancel.

A

The questions about about this stuff that oh here's another one that we have so on different issues. Let me let me come over to the issues here. Let's tour, let's come over to our labels where work! Well, let's come over to our labels here, so here in the labels.

A

This is a list of all the different things that we have all of our different labels that we have set up here now, these ones that you see with area those are gonna, be things that were classifying like what kind of a thing it is, and one of the things we did just recently too, is that we we broke out the SharePoint framework label into a framework general and a framework extensions.

A

We've made a lot of issues that were specific to extensions and so I went in and found all the ones that were related to extensions or at least I, think I did and I removed the framework label and I added in the framework extensions label, hopefully make things a little bit better now. Another thing that we have here is, let me jump over to okay. Let me show you these guys right here, so these blue ones about status. Now, let's see feedback, adding description of labels would help people understand the flow.

A

That's a good issue, hey Vincent. Can you submit an issue on that and tag me on it because you're right, because once I do that I can close the issue haha cool all right, so I'm trying to eat my own dog food now for the status here, a couple things you've got. These are telling you some things about the issue you submitted. So, for example, let's say, for example, that you submitted an issue and someone I looked at this issue or someone looked at the issue and they said you know.

A

This issue is pretty much the exact same thing that we saw someone else post and we've got we're already tracking that other issue, like hey old, like when there was a something that happened. I think with the azure ad and token acquisition something broke a couple months ago or a couple weeks ago, and we saw all these issues coming in. One issue was where everybody was kind of consolidating stuff, but we still saw other issues coming in what we do and what the general practice is.

A

When you do, this open source projects is, if it's always, if we have more issues that are the same thing and they're just plus ones, then what we're gonna do is we're going to tag it as a duplicate in the comments will reference hey?

A

This is a duplicate of issue, number of blah, blah blah blah blah and then we're going to tag it as duplicate and then we're gonna close your issue, and if you have something that you can add to the to additional information, you don't need to say plus one me to plus one me too, but if you have additional information that you can provide, go put it on that original one. It just makes it easier.

A

So we don't have lots of issues and we think we've got like fifteen different problems with one thing, when it's really one problem, that's affecting a lot of people.

A

If you asked a question, if we tag it as status answer, so if well, if we answer it and then we tie get a status answer or someone answers it, then what that does is that's also gonna kick off another one of our internal workflows and if you don't respond or jump in within seven days, it's automatically going to close that issue because, as far as we're concerned, if you asked a question and someone has answered it and it's been tagged as an answer, then everything is resolved.

A

If you haven't, if it's not answered, then respond, then just jump in and say something I mean you get email alerts when this stuff happens and you can jump in and you can respond and provide your own, your additional details. But if you don't respond, then, as far as we're concerned, it's done and so let's go ahead and close it now. These other ones that you see down here where it's like fixed, fixed next drop, track working on it. So how do you? How do these work?

A

So let's say, for example, that something you've logged, something in the V issue list and there's a bug and there and it's been recognized as a bug right someone jumped in and said, yep. That's a problem if Microsoft says that they are working on a fix, then we'll tag it as working on it means, and that essentially, is saying that hey is a known issue.

A

The features being addressed will use other status labels in the comments for more details if they've fixed it and it's coming any day now or it's going to be released any day now we're just waiting for it to roll through all the tenants, we're gonna say, fix next wrong. That applies to both things that our service on and SharePoint Online. That also applies to things and like say, for example, in the tooling, like in SharePoint framework, tooling, that we have it'll be updated in the next draw.

A

If the issue has now been confirmed to have been fixed and rolled out, we'll tag it as fixed and then close the issues. What this allows us to do is to easily go back and find issues that are still open, that really need to be cleaned up once they've all been done, and then, if you post a question like just a little bit ago, I saw a question that came in where someone said: hey the bot framework, v4 install, doesn't work and I'm like.

A

Is this sharepoint guys, so we tagged it as type invalid and we closed it. It's like that doesn't really belong here. Someone else actually responded and said that doesn't really belong here. You really should go do that in there for them, and then they there was a follow-up question to it, but it didn't really apply really to SharePoint specifically, and so we tagged it as invalid.

A

That's that's pretty much a lot of the stuff that I wanted to run to. Let's see double check, how we're using labels, how the bots work, how to submit a good issue, or at least in my opinion, how to submit a good issue, how we're rehoming or transferring issues of different repos and I. Think that's I! Think! That's! Basically it it. If you guys have any questions about, how are you using the issue list or whatever these community calls, are absolutely fantastic? I'm gonna do I'm gonna.

A

Take the recording that been going through here and some of the questions that I've answered here and some of the feedback. We've gotten I'm gonna try and write this up into having a more like official kind of how-to, putting it as either like in one of the docs in the issue list or in the in the repo or off the wiki, and we'll update the issue list template with a link to say: hey, here's where you go to go.

A

Do this stuff I may even put some animated images in there and stuff like that, or in different references on where you can find better github stuff. You've got any feedback, submit an issue and call me out: do at Andrew Colin, you want, you sit there and you something that makes the issue list better is well there. You go her Vincent's going through he's already called me out more very nice checkbox Benson.

A

If you want to go through- and you want to, you know, make sure that I see it working with the issue list who likes that Sebastian thanks Sebastian, then then just go through and tag tag me as that Andrew Connell I'll definitely see it. Don't the one thing I guess we would ask.

A

Is it this makes I'm asking for you specifically to tag me on this, but you know when people when you ask a question it's best to just ask the question and not tag specific people ask it and the people when they have time they jump in to actually give you a hand. It don't start. You know going in and just saying: hey, I have a question about column, formatting and people start tagging all these different people and, like you know, dear dear Chris, Kent and Switzerland, and all that stuff.

A

It's just go through and post the issue and we'll go through make sure that the people that need to see it but I will go ahead and assume ownership of this one and I'll say I'm working on it triage there you go thanks. Benson Montreal is plotting against you. It's the the the the aggression from the north, all right, cool, so I think that's probably everything unless you've got a question for me.

B

About the process you mean, let's see.

B

Anyway, and thank you AC for taking the lead on that one, because that definitely helps I'm scaling these things and that's that's what we want to do within this sharepoint and together with community together with MVP, is we've built this world together and it's it's it's how it should be done, because you people in the field you actually work with these people or with customers. You work with other people and that helps on own well, getting the things more real-world. That is one of the key points here as well, but thank you AC for that.

B