"If you understand the rejection reason for your bug report you will progress in your testing career faster than you can imagine."
The Bug Report Status
To help you better understand what the life cycle of the bug report looks like we will list some cases that you might face while testing.
Once you click on the Submit button your bug report will show up on the list of Bugs in the test cycle. The status of your bug report will be Awaiting Review. After the Team Leader reviews it, your bug report status can have one of these 3 statuses:
Forwarded to customer
Rejected by Test IO
Request by TL
After the customer reviews your bug report, the status can change into:
Accepted by customer
Rejected by customer
Request by customer
Additionally, if the customer, doesn't review your bug report 10 days after the test ends, the status of your bug report will change to Archived which means that your bug report was auto-accepted and it will be paid. The only difference between Accepted by customer and Archived is that you won't get 10% more of the bug payout if the customer doesn't accept your bug manually. You may find more information about your bug report status here.
The Information Request
One of the greatest fears our testers have is the Unread Comment on the Tester's Dashboard. Sounds silly but Unread Comment can mean 3 things:
Your bug report is rejected
Your bug report has an information request by Team Leader or CSM
Your bug report has an information request by the customer
In all 3 cases, you can learn for future test cycles. When your bug gets rejected, in the Comment section of the bug report you will learn what is the reason for the rejection. Having known that, you will improve your testing for the next test cycle.
An Information request represents a request aimed to clarify or enhance your bug report. It can be sent by TL or customer. When you get an Information Request from the TL, it means that TL thinks that your bug report has the potential to be forwarded to the customer. Consider this as an opportunity to improve. Read the Information Request and act according to your TL's request. Upon submitting the required information wait patiently while your TL reviews the bug report once again. Don't send a message in the Chat, and don't add additional comments. TL will get a notification that you responded to the request and will review the submission as soon as possible.
If you receive the Information Request from the customer, it means that the customer needs more data about the bug's nature or not being able to reproduce the bug. Do your best to provide the required information in a timely manner.
Once you respond to the Information request (regardless of the requestor), the status of your bug report will change to Awaiting Review. When the TL reviews the submission, your bug report status will change to Forwarded to the customer or Rejected by Test IO based on the information you provided in the Information Request response. You can find more information about the Information Requests here.
Note: Sometimes you might face multiple Information Requests by TL (especially during your Greenhorn phase). Consider this as our attempt to give you more chances to improve your testing capacity.