Gmail Filters are buggy !!!

I have a habit of testing open source software's in my free time because there's a saying 'Practice makes a man perfect'. So, I download software's from the internet and simply test them whenever I am free. I do this to improve my testing skills, get new test ideas and simply because I enjoy breaking software's much more than I love to create them !!!

So, this weekend, I downloaded a couple of software's to test but ended up not testing them. Instead, I gave myself a challenge to test the most popular free email service provider, Gmail. Gmail is too big to explore in a couple of hours, so I narrowed down to a feature of Gmail which I hardly use, 'Filters'. I didn't expect myself to find many bugs but I did found one lurking around which should have been identified by "Test Cases"...hehehe.....


So Here's the bug report and for the developer's, the Story Writing:

One day, a user subscribes to very popular testing magazines, testing forums and clubs. Subscribing meant that he'll receive loads of mails from them. So he wanted all of those mails to be placed under one location and not be mixed with rest of the mail in his inbox.
So he logged into the Gmail Account and on the top of the page, he saw a link named 'Create a Filter'. This made sense to the user that he should create filters for his testing mails.

He clicks on the link to create the filter, and is redirected to the following page.

The user populates the 'From' field with 'Testing', so that any mail that contains the word 'Testing' will be included in this filter. He didn't require any other fields, so he clicked on the 'Next Step' button, and the following page appears.

Out of all the options available, he decides to apply a label to all of these mails by checking the checkbox 'Apply the Label'. However, he has to create a new label and therefore chooses the option New Label.

He enters the name of the new label as 'Testing' and clicks on the 'Create' button.
















A small blue text appears and states that the new label has been created. :D
















Excitedly, he goes to the 'Create Filters' grid at the top of the screen and clicks on the Drop Down List but to his shock, the 'testing' label is not there !! :(

What ??? How can this happen....Where's it gone, I just created it !! Gmail just prompted that the new label has been created, then why the hell it doesn't show it !!!!
The user thinks that maybe it has been created and has been selected by default. Gmail wouldn't mislead their users or would it, hmm??


Anyhow, the user decides to go forward with creating the filter and clicks on the 'Create a Filter' button.
















Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF !!!!

It's asking me to choose a label, but it wouldn't let me choose the label which I just created. God, Gmail should do keep their tester's tight !!!!

Through this example, there are two points on which I want to lay emphasis on:

1. Bug Reports: A tester is or rather should not be judged by the number of defects that he has raised but the manner in which he has reported them to the developers. How much does the bug report helps the developer understand the problem not just from the logic point of view but from the user point of view.
2. No Software is defect Free. Whether it's the Microsoft Vista or Gmail or any other popular software, each one of them has defects. They might not be of high severity but a bug is a bug. So do not hesitate in testing software's because they are popular and assuming that they'll not contain any defects.

Happy Testing !!!


PS: If you actually do come across this bug, the workaround for this to click on the 'Back' button and then on 'Create a Filter', the label created will appear.