Hello Adam, could you share some insights into your professional journey at Dynatrace?
Actually, my journey began in Dynatrace's predecessor, Compuware, in 2007.
Ha! Another Dynasaur! 
🦕
🦕 Yes 🙂 It’s been a long journey. I joined the Technical Support team to support a product called DCRUM—Data Center Real User Monitoring. It was an intriguing concept of monitoring that didn’t interfere with the analyzed infrastructure; it just stood in the corner of the data center, observing, analyzing, and reporting.
DCRUM used a specialized network device to analyze traffic mirrored from the entire data center. It could report the complete journey of a real user - from the browser through the middle layers to the databases.
Later, we transitioned to the Dynatrace product and have supported customers ever since.
What is the typical job of a Technical Support Engineer?
First and foremost, we handle customers' tickets. Support primarily focuses on investigating potential bugs and other questionable behaviors in the Dynatrace product. A significant part of our work is distinguishing misconfigurations or incorrect setups from actual product bugs. Once this distinction is made, we try to find a workaround to ease the situation.
The next step is reproducing the issue the customer has reported. This helps us analyze whether the problem has been fixed or requires escalation to Development. Reproducing the issue also helps development analyze the problem more efficiently and provide a faster solution. In addition to troubleshooting, we address configuration issues and answer questions, often collaborating with Product Specialists available on the Dynatrace Chat.
Analyzing complex issues requires in-depth product knowledge. We achieve this by specializing in specific areas, necessitating ongoing learning to keep up with the rapidly evolving product. We focus on knowledge-sharing activities, such as writing internal and external articles, attending specialized Tech Exchanges within the Support team, and mentoring each other.
Do you also use the Dynatrace Community?
Of course! We engage with the Community in three main ways: answering questions, writing troubleshooting articles, and searching for solutions.
Does Support search for solutions on the Community or share answers from support tickets?
"Yes, many questions have already been answered in the Community, so our searches also include this resource when working on tickets. Once we find relevant information, it becomes a valuable piece for us and for the customer."
We often link Community discussions or troubleshooting articles in our responses, increasing awareness of this platform among the customers we work with. Also, if knowledge from support tickets can be shared in a public space, we cross-promote and publish this content in a Community space, so in the future, customers won't have to contact us individually but could resolve issues on their own.
You mentioned troubleshooting/ writing articles. Can you tell us more?
While we handle tickets, we also strive to enhance our customers' self-service experience. We constantly ask ourselves what the most common problems and questions are, and we aim to write comprehensive troubleshooting guides to address them. For smaller articles, we try to group them into troubleshooting maps.
These articles not only help customers diagnose issues on their own but also provide us with ready and verified answers that we can use in tickets. We’re establishing processes to ensure our articles are high-quality, easy to understand, and complete.
Can you give an example of a troubleshooting article?
Sure! In my specialization, Real User Monitoring (RUM), a common and frustrating issue occurs when RUM functionality disrupts the monitored web application. The instinctive response is to disable RUM entirely and continue investigating.
Our article, How to test RUM without disturbing application users, explains how to address this in a smart, conditional way. It shows how to shut RUM down for everyone except a strictly selected browser instance - not even an entire workstation. This allows investigations to continue without impacting users.
Having this article readily available has helped us in numerous situations. For instance, it saves us from explaining the slightly complex procedure during war-room discussions with customers. Instead, customers can analyze the document independently and decide if it’s feasible in their scenario. In another case, it enabled a customer to troubleshoot on their own overnight.
Additionally, the article’s existence allows us to provide consistent and faster responses in tickets. Beyond its technical content, a good troubleshooting article also indirectly promotes awareness of Dynatrace’s self-service options - for us and our customers.
Do you receive feedback from customers?
Certainly! Feedback on our articles is like fuel - it motivates us to create even better ones. What we value most, apart from kudos, are technical discussions in the comments. These help us identify areas where the content may be unclear, outdated, or need improvement.
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