[Kmymoney-devel] Handling of Errors in Online Banking

[Jack]

On 2015.02.01 15:15, Christian Dávid wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> the last open step before we can release 4.8 from my point of view is  
> the error handling in online banking. But I could need some ideas how  
> this could be done. The execution of the jobs is potentially  
> asynchronously and the error response of the bank is likely an error  
> message (=unstructured string).
> 
> Has somebody an idea how this can be done in a user friendly way? I  
> would love not to create huge logs with long, cryptic error messages  
> which are useless for the user anyway.

I agree that you should not present to the user any message which will  
not make sense.  However, all messages should be saved (such as in a  
log file) so they can be checked and copied or looked at by someone who  
DOES know what they mean.  On the other hand, as a user, I really hate  
getting messages that just say "Something went wrong.  Contact  
someone." without providing a way to get the details and/or a  
suggestion of what to do other than worry or give up.

What about displaying a simple error message, including something like  
"The actual error from the bank is shown below, and should be included  
in any request for further assistance." and then include the original,  
perhaps in a slightly smaller font.  I'm not sure whether a single log  
file with timestamps is used for all errors (and perhaps a configurable  
level of warnings/debugs/...) or a file per error or per transaction,  
with the timestamp in the file name is better.

Jack