James MacArthur is always my first beta-tester. He is a web designer and owns The Web 4 Less in Clevedon. James has been a business partner but is also my friend. An honest friend that tells me how it is. That is what I need from a beta-tester.
He signed up, went to add his first contact and got the error shown. This is an “Unhandled Exception” error, which basically means, something has happened that I did not code for!
Am I upset, yes, not because James found it, but I did not find it first. I am pleased James found it, better him than a paying user.
So what happened and why did I miss this? When you build an app, you start with no data. You write the code to add data to the database. However, when a new user signs up, there is no data, and since creating the code, additional functionality, database fields and new logic has been added.
I missed this because I have a routine that clears out my user, deletes contacts, actions, note etc. What it did not delete was “contact types” (Lead, Customer, etc) because I did not want to set them up again. When James signed up, these contact types should have been automatically created, but a bug prevented this!
Releasing a new product is an event that happens one or two times a year. However, this is something I should know and should have tested!
James is now up and running, and the embarrassment I felt has diminished. I have added two more beta-testers today. Lets see what they report.