Improved error messaging for support

[nairiboo]

Problem Statement: Support has difficulty when diagnosing some of our issues because our error messages either don’t explain the problem well or don’t point back to specific database information we can use when solving the issue.

Rationale: When users experience errors in Hypothesis Support is pretty reliant on the user helping us reveal the information on their end that will lead to a solution, such as the published status of files, the specific causes of our error messages, and console errors from their browser. If possible we could more quickly, and with less user inconvenience, dig into data gathered about the environment and proactively recommend solutions if we gathered and stored that data. Impact: If support can solve problems without needing to meet with users or ask them to gather data on their own users will have more positive experiences and we’ll save both our and the users’ time when solving errors. Proposal:

1. Log more data on our end: browser, environmental, and LMS error data
2. Make sure this error data is visible to the Support team
3. Consider error codes visible to the user that they can share which will point to error records internally so we can find the data more quickly.