Phone number field constraints in UG inconsistent with app behaviour

[charlesliyifeng]

This is the field constraints for PHONE:

The phone number 12-12333123 follows the requirements, but it is not allowed.

[nus-pe-bot]

Team's Response

The phone number 12-12333123 follows the stated field constraints, yet it is flagged as invalid. This behaviour is unexpected and inconsistent with the system's documented rules.

Despite being flagged incorrectly, this issue does not impact critical functionality as specific formatting case mentioned is not a commonly used format. This reduces the urgency of fixing the issue, as alternative valid inputs are available and the problem does not disrupt major workflows.

Items for the Tester to Verify

:question: Issue severity

Team chose [severity.Low] Originally [severity.Medium]

• [x] I disagree

Reason for disagreement: I disagree with the dev team's argument that this is a low severity bug and offer my rebuttal for each of the arguments below.

Argument 1: specific formatting case mentioned is not a commonly used format. Rebuttal: This phone number format with 2 digit area code is commonly used in Malaysia according to this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_numbers_in_Malaysia

Hence, the flaw affects most Malaysian users and the argument is invalid.

Argument 2: alternative valid inputs are available and the problem does not disrupt major workflows. Rebuttal: Affected users may try to separate the area code using space instead, but this also fails:

The only alternative is to not separate the area code at all, which significantly reduces the readability of the phone number and hinders Malaysian users.

Therefore, this flaw does not only appear in very rare situations, and causes occasional inconvenience to some users, so it should be classified as a medium severity bug.

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