How to integrate Problem Steps Recorder (psr) in my application?

Asked 14/12, 2011 at 22:37 Answered 27/8, 2015 at 16:26

Solved delphi bug-reporting problem-steps-recorder

Windows 7 has a wonderful facility called problem steps recorder.
You can start it by typing psr on the command line.

enter image description here

What's the best way to integrate this into a Delphi application?
And is there a COM automation interface for psr?

I want to:

start the recorder from the program (easy: issue a command line and start it);
start recording automatically; (can this be done?)
Preset the filename psr will store the capture in; (how?)
Email the capture to an email address specified in my code.

If there's an alternative tool that does the same stuff I'd love to hear about that as well of course.
Because this is mainly a user-experience issue I'm not interested in automated crash reports, I know madexcept does a wonderful job on those.

I'm interested in seeing a slideshow where the user explains in 4 steps why feature x sucks or does not work as expected.

Sciurine answered 14/12, 2011 at 22:37 Comment(6)

For those who are interested: U+043C: CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EM. – Japheth 15/12, 2011 at 12:8

I am particularly interested in why Outlook works so well with PSR. For example, Outlook shows green rectangles around the focused panes that the user typed some input into. – Burr 15/12, 2011 at 20:4

Interesting related information: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms744822.aspx (UI Automation support in MS Common controls). Having your app be more friendly to UI Automation would probably make it work better with PSR. The thing that keeps me from loving PSR is its "willfull ignorance of keyboard text entry". – Burr 15/12, 2011 at 20:16

@NullUserException, thanks for trying to fix the title. – Sciurine 15/12, 2011 at 23:24

@Sciurine I know, it's a pain the behind: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/112944/… I undid everything after I realized I wouldn't be able to retag it was all said and done. – Salientian 15/12, 2011 at 23:28

I've used a different workaround for the time being. – Salientian 15/12, 2011 at 23:29

It can be used from command line:

psr.exe [/start |/stop][/output ] [/sc (0|1)] [/maxsc ] [/sketch (0|1)] [/slides (0|1)] [/gui (o|1)] [/arcetl (0|1)] [/arcxml (0|1)] [/arcmht (0|1)] [/stopevent ] [/maxlogsize ] [/recordpid ]

Here you can find more information about command line usage: ctrlf5.net/?p=176 link removed as page 176 is now a nasty malware page

And here is sample project which automates psr thorught command-line (c#): http://psr4vs.codeplex.com/SourceControl/changeset/view/10645#172579

Alexalexa answered 14/12, 2011 at 23:1 Comment(3)

Way cool, when I type psr /? it gives an error though. Ah well that's MS for ya. – Sciurine 14/12, 2011 at 23:10

@Sciurine - well this error says that you provided (/?) incorrect parameter, not that parameters are ignored. This was suspicious. – Alexalexa 14/12, 2011 at 23:18

I just found the original post from Microsoft: blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2011/10/04/… – Sciurine 14/12, 2011 at 23:46

Free alternative I can suggest is called StepsToReproduce. In many aspects it's much more usable - it allows several options for recording (screen/window/region) and has powerful annotation tools.

Pendragon answered 27/8, 2015 at 16:26 Comment(0)

You can also create a desktop icon whose target points to a .BAT file where you launch the PSR tool first, then launch your application, and upon application closure, stop the recorder. e.g.

@ECHO OFF
START /B PSR.EXE /START /OUTPUT "[outFilePath]" /SC 1 /MAXSC 25 /GUI 0
CALL "[pathToYourApp]"
PSR.EXE /STOP

Gratian answered 9/2, 2015 at 13:55 Comment(1)

Yes, obviously, but that's hardly integration. – Sciurine 12/2, 2015 at 11:43

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