How to Write a Known Issues Section in Release Notes in English
Learn how to write a clear, honest known issues section in English release notes — describing the problem, its scope, and the workaround without undermining confidence in the release.
A known issues section exists to save your support team from a flood of duplicate reports and save users from wasted troubleshooting time — but only if it’s written precisely enough to be useful. A vague known issues entry is nearly as unhelpful as no entry at all, since users can’t tell if their exact problem is the one being described.
Key Vocabulary
Affected scope — the specific conditions under which the known issue occurs, stated precisely enough that a user can determine whether they’re actually affected, rather than a vague description that leaves everyone unsure. “The affected scope for this issue is specifically Safari users on iOS 17 exporting PDFs larger than 10MB — if you’re on a different browser or exporting a smaller file, you’re not affected by this particular issue.”
Workaround — a concrete, actionable step a user can take to avoid or mitigate the issue until a proper fix ships, distinguished clearly from the fix itself, which sets accurate expectations about what’s temporary versus resolved. “As a workaround, exporting in two smaller batches instead of one large export avoids the issue entirely. This is a temporary workaround, not a fix, and it will no longer be necessary once the underlying bug is resolved.”
Fix timeline (or explicit absence of one) — either a specific target for when a proper fix will ship, or an honest statement that no timeline exists yet, both of which are more useful to a user than silence on the question. “We don’t yet have a confirmed fix timeline for this issue, but it’s actively being investigated, and we’ll update this entry as soon as we have a more specific date.”
Severity framing — an honest, calibrated description of how disruptive the issue actually is, avoiding both minimizing language that undersells real impact and alarmist language that overstates a minor edge case. “This is a cosmetic issue only — the layout shifts slightly on narrow screens, but no functionality is affected and no data is at risk. We’re calling this out specifically to avoid unnecessary support tickets, not because it’s a serious problem.”
Common Phrases
- “This issue affects [specific, precise scope] — if you’re outside that scope, you should not encounter it.”
- “As a temporary workaround, you can [specific, concrete step].”
- “We don’t yet have a confirmed fix timeline, but this is actively being tracked.”
- “This is a [minor/cosmetic/significant] issue — we want to be precise about its actual severity.”
- “This entry will be updated once a fix is available or the timeline becomes clearer.”
Example Sentences
Scoping a known issue precisely: “Known issue: users on the free tier attempting to export more than 50 rows to CSV will see a timeout error. This does not affect paid tier accounts, which have no row limit on exports.”
Providing a genuinely usable workaround: “Until this is fixed, exporting in batches of under 50 rows avoids the timeout entirely. We recognize this is inconvenient, and a proper fix removing the underlying limit is our current top priority for the next release.”
Being honest about an uncertain timeline without leaving users in the dark: “We don’t have a specific date for a fix yet, since this requires a change to our export pipeline that we want to test thoroughly before shipping. We’ll update this section the moment we have a confirmed timeline.”
Professional Tips
- Define affected scope as narrowly and precisely as the actual bug allows — a vague scope causes unaffected users to worry unnecessarily and affected users to remain unsure whether their issue is the one being described.
- Always distinguish a workaround clearly from an actual fix — presenting a workaround as if it were resolved sets a user up to be frustrated again when the “temporary” step turns out to still be necessary weeks later.
- State the fix timeline honestly, including explicitly saying there isn’t one yet — an honest “we don’t know yet, but we’re tracking it” is more trustworthy than silence, and far more trustworthy than a date you’re not confident in.
- Calibrate severity framing carefully — describing a cosmetic issue with alarming language causes unnecessary support volume, while underselling a genuinely disruptive issue damages trust once users discover the real impact themselves.
- Update the known issues entry as new information becomes available, rather than treating it as a write-once document — a known issue that silently disappears without explanation, or lingers stale for months, undermines the credibility of the entire release notes document.
Practice Exercise
- Write a precisely scoped known issue entry describing exactly who is affected.
- Draft a workaround statement that clearly distinguishes itself from an actual fix.
- Write a fix-timeline sentence for an issue where no date is confirmed yet.