Automatically capture custom metadata inside your bug reports

If you would like to collect additional information from your users or your environment into your bug reports, then you are in luck!

Some of our customers have asked us recently if it would be possible to collect additional information (custom metadata) within Marker.io bug reports.

You ask, and we deliver 🙏 → 🚚

We can now give your developers the ability to pass custom metadata to your Marker.io script, which is then forwarded into each bug report.

How can custom metadata help your developers

Here is a quick example of a bug report with all of our standard metadata (URL, browser type, OS, etc..)

The issue in this example is that this developer needs to quickly review:

1. What page type the error is coming from [Standard, blog post, extended width, etc.]
2. What is the category of the website? (As the company builds websites for construction, health, and the insurance sector.)
3. What is the priority of this specific web page? EG: Blog posts may be 5/10 priority, and store checkout may be 10/10 priority.

With our new custom metadata option, these details can be added to each bug report.

Now the developer can quickly review:

1. This is one of the health websites
2. The page type is "page-template-default"
3. The page priority is very high [as it is a booking page]

How can custom metadata improve your bug reports?

We see this update addressing 3 scenarios:

1: Providing additional user information to help you prioritize your bugs

• Is the person reporting this bug a freemium user, a paid user, or a guest?
• Does this user have product in their shopping cart?
• Do we have a lifetime value for this user?
• Is the user currently logged in?
• Which of our paid plans is this user on?
• And many more examples we can't even think of right now! ☕

2: Providing additional environment information to each bug report

• What software version is this user coming from? EG: Old version, Current version, beta version?
• Is this a live environment or a staging environment?

3: Providing additional dynamic links to your bug reports

• If you already collect session information from your software or products like intercom and sentry, you can now send these details into Marker.io bug reports also.

How does custom metadata work on Marker.io?

I thought you'd never ask. 👇

Custom metadata checklist

• You need to be on the Team or Company plan. Custom metadata is also available on our trial.
• You need to use the JavaScript installation option or our new browser SDK.
• You need to be comfortable with JavaScript or ask your JS developer.
• Check out our detailed documentation here.

Custom metadata sample install

The custom metadata will work for you on our JavaScript installation option.

The old configuration was:

window.markerConfig = {
  project: "<PROJECT ID>",
};

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And now you can edit as follows by providing a customData object:

window.markerConfig = {
  project: "<PROJECT ID>",
​
  customData: {
    websiteId: 123,
    websiteType: 'Health',
    //Play with more javaScript here!  
  }
};

What type of information can you capture?

• Strings (text, links, number, date)
• Number (eg: 3.99)
• Boolean (true/false)
• Array
• Objects

Conclusion

Custom metadata is a game-changing update. There are endless use cases. This will enable you to collect detailed feedback directly into your chosen project. Feel free to share your use-cases with us, as we are delighted to receive feedback on our product. Contact us any time using the chat function on the bottom right.

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Psst!🤫: We also released our new Browser SDK [in beta], check it out here.

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