Every issue a tester reports lands on your test's Issues page, where you can triage it, assign it, talk to the tester who found it, link it to duplicates, and push it to Jira. Each report arrives with the steps, the expected and actual result, and the tester's device already attached, so the work starts at deciding what to do about it rather than working out what happened.
Use it during a bug hunt when reports arrive faster than you can read them, when the same crash is reported by twelve testers and you need one ticket rather than twelve, when a report is missing a detail and you want the tester to fill it in, or when your engineers live in Jira and should never have to log in here.
Issue management is included with every test. The Jira integration and the Reports page depend on your plan, so those two may not be available on your account.
What a tester submits
Testers report an issue from the test with a fixed set of fields, so every report has the same shape:
Summary and a Description of the steps to reproduce it.
Expected Result and Actual Result.
Reproducibility: Always, Intermittent, Once, or Undetermined.
Severity, from Trivial to Critical, and a Blocker checkbox for an issue that stops them continuing the test.
The task or survey they were working on, and any screenshots, recordings, or files as attachments.
Their device. The manufacturer, model, operating system and version, and browser are detected automatically and attached to the report; the tester can correct them if needed.
Before submitting, the tester is asked to search existing issues and link theirs to a match, which reduces duplicates before they reach you. If you connect Jira, you can also add custom fields to the tester's form.
How to triage an issue
Open your test and click Issues in the left menu. Click any issue to open its detail view; everything below is set inline and saved immediately.
Set the Status. New issues arrive as To Do. Move an issue to In Progress when someone picks it up, Needs More Info when you want the tester to add something, Fixed - Please Retest when a fix is ready for the tester to confirm, Complete when it is done, or Outside Scope when it is not something this test should track.
Set the Priority, from Highest to Lowest. It starts from the severity the tester chose, and you can change it at any time.
Correct the Reproducibility if your own attempt differs from the tester's, and tick or clear This issue is a blocker and the tester cannot continue.
Choose an Assignee from your test's admins. Read-only admins cannot be assigned.
Click Start watching in the issue header to be notified of comments and changes on that issue.
The issue's Notifications feed records every change with who made it: assignments, priority changes, status changes, and the tester's own actions, such as confirming they added the requested information, retesting and finding the issue still there, or confirming it is resolved.
How to communicate with the tester
The Comments section on each issue is a thread with the tester who reported it.
Type in Send a message to the tester, attach files if needed, and send. You can edit or delete a comment afterwards.
After you send a comment, a prompt asks Want the tester to respond? Choose Yes, update status to Needs More Info to change the status and prompt the tester, or No, just submit comment.
The tester replies in the same thread and is asked to confirm when they have provided what you need.
If your account includes automatic translation, comments written in another language are translated for you and yours are translated for the tester, with the original always available.
For discussion that should stay inside your team, use Internal Notes on the issue. Notes are never shown to the tester, and they are included when you export issues.
How to link duplicates
When several testers report the same problem, keep one issue as the parent and link the rest to it.
Open the issue and choose Mark as duplicate from its menu.
Choose the direction: Duplicates (select the parent) to link this issue under another, or Is duplicated by (select the children) to bring other issues under this one. You can also Reassign the parent or Add more duplicates later.
The issue now shows This issue is marked as a duplicate of with a link to the parent, and the parent lists its duplicates. Unlink all removes the links.
From the grid view you can select several issues and use Link issues to link them in one step. The Duplicate filter shows only linked issues, and sorting by duplicate count brings the most widely reported problems to the top. Only issues from the same test can be linked.
Finding the issues you need
The filters at the top of the Issues page narrow the list, and they carry through to the export.
Status, Priority, and Assignee are always visible.
More filters adds Task set, Tester, Duplicate, Platform, Model, OS Version, Demographics, Blockers (stuck or not stuck), Tags, and your custom test and profile fields.
The search box matches the summary, description, expected and actual results, issue ID, and tester name.
Save filters keeps a set of filters as one of My Filters, or as a Team Filter that everyone on the test can use.
Switch between Detail view, a list with the selected issue open beside it, and Grid view, a table with Summary, ID, Updated, Priority, Status, Assignee, Tester, and Linked columns. In the grid you can add demographic, tag, device, and custom field columns, sort by update date, submit date, duplicate count, or priority, and select many issues to Send message, Tag testers, or Link issues at once.
Notifications
Your notification defaults are in your user settings: Bug Submission emails you when a new issue is filed, Bug Comments when a tester comments on an issue you watch, and Daily Digest sends a nightly summary of activity across every test you manage. Each test's Advanced Settings page can override these for that test, including New issue submissions and Issue comments for issues that you watch. See Advanced settings for your test. Unread issue activity also shows as a badge in the platform.
Pushing issues to Jira
If your plan includes the Jira integration, open the test's Advanced Settings and click Setup Jira Integration. The wizard connects a Jira project, maps fields, sets default values, maps BetaTesting priorities to Jira priorities, and lets you add custom fields to the tester's issue form under Customize the Bug Form.
Once connected, click Enable Jira Auto-Push on the Issues page. Every existing issue is pushed to Jira, every new issue is pushed as it arrives, and each pushed issue shows its Jira key in the header. Updates you make here and duplicate links are sent to Jira as well. See Integrating with Jira.
Exporting and reporting
Click Export on the Issues page to download the current filtered list as an Excel file, with every field, the device details, attachment links, duplicate counts, parent IDs, and internal notes. If your plan includes reporting, the Reports page adds All Issues, Open Issues, Duplicate Issues, and Issue Messages reports that are generated in the background and kept with a download history. The Issues Submitted count on the test overview and the Issues grade in the BetaIQ score track how the test is going overall; the grade reflects how many testers are stuck and how many high-severity issues remain open.
Viewing bugs in Grid View
Things to know
Severity and priority are one field. The tester's severity becomes the starting priority, and when you change the priority the tester's original choice is not kept separately. The Notifications feed shows the history.
Issues a tester has started but not submitted are drafts and do not appear on your Issues page or in exports.
Prefer changing an issue's status to deleting it. Delete bug removes the report and its thread permanently; Complete or Outside Scope keeps the record and the tester's history.
Admins with support access or above can edit issues; read-only admins can view them.
Jira integration is one way. Changes you make in Jira, including status changes, are not brought back into BetaTesting.
For advice on running a productive bug hunt, see Managing bug reports: best practices.