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Community events are an integral part of BizTalk360. TechMeet360 is an innovative technology event drive taken by BizTalk360 where all the technical admirers integrate and get endless possibilities to learn and explore different cutting edge technologies.

On April 21st 2017, a whole organizing team of Global Azure Bootcamp 2017 was gearing up for the event. All the preparation was going on in full swing. I found the wave of enthusiasm spreading on everybody’s face and doings. Administration panel was busy with final checklist preparation and gift packaging. Our Event coordinators (Arun/Sriram/Kuppurasu) were busy with accommodation arrangements for the speakers. For the first time, Microsoft speakers (Deepak Rajendran, Harikharan Krishnaraju, Vinod Sundarraj, Amit Kumar Tripathi, Madhura Bharadwaj, Karan Singh) presented at a Coimbatore event. We wanted to improve our work culture and take inspiration from Microsoft, so we invited the speakers to the BizTalk360 office for a round of technical discussion. Originally planned for 1-hour session, went close to 2.5 hours. The entire engineering team was ready with a bunch of questions to be discussed with the team during the meeting which had been arranged.

With full of excitement, it was 6.30 pm in the evening and the team here at BizTalk360 was waiting for the arrival of the speakers from Microsoft product support group, excited to welcome the team in our office. After all the welcome formalities, as planned the discussion panel had been set up and the whole BizTalk360 engineering team – Microsoft meet up began with a warm introduction.

Lucky people get opportunities (we are lucky enough to get the opportunity to work at BizTalk360 since we are community focussed and not just work focussed), brave people create opportunities (here we have awesome techies to create the opportunities), and the Winners are those who convert problems into opportunities (here we all are having a record of success to convert problems into opportunities, to solve one common problem). Precisely this is what our two flagship products are built with. To solve the problems in the integration platform, we have converted the problem into a solution.

Here at BizTalk360, all the above-said things are happening in the right proportion. Opportunities will knock just once. It is up to you to make yourself grow to the next level. Every day is a new start here to grab new ways of learning technology and shape yourself personally and professionally.

The discussion arranged with Microsoft product support team was a great opportunity for us to gather their experiences and make most out of it. Discussion started with how the support process guidelines the Microsoft escalation team. Regardless of the issue, how the given problem statement to be approached and how to build a good relationship with the customer is a most essential factor of our discussion. Be it a production issue or a staging, essentially we should understand the frustration level of the customer and go ahead with isolating the problem and navigate to the root-cause. On any fine day, an issue will get resolved, but the bond between the customer and the support engineers should last long. Treat the issue of the customer from your own shoes, this makes the customer gain lot of confidence in us and our product.

Our Understandings

As the support process, has been filtered at various levels according to the expertise, the first and foremost thing is to scope the issue:

Scoping:

Before you begin troubleshooting any problem, scoping is very important. You must distinguish what is working and what is not working. From the big picture to a small pixel as a Top-Down approach.

Isolation (narrow down to the exact root cause):

Once the problem is scoped, you need to identify where the root cause lies. A checklist would be helpful after the problem is scoped. By asking more information concerning the problem will be useful to confine it from real assumption.

A simple command prompt ping can save you from the issue. Usage of multiple troubleshooting/diagnosing tools should be used to narrow down the issue. Rather than using the external tools, we can always make use of the internal tools like command prompt, event logs and IIS trace which spares your investigating time. Additionally, open-source external tools like: Fiddler, Postman, Net-Stat, Wireshark and so on will comprehensively understand the issue.

How often can web meetings be scheduled with the customer?

Good relationship starts with a verbal conversation. It is always better to immediately get on a call with the customer to understand the problem instead of going through multiple email iterations.

Conclusion

The team wrapped up after the informative and interactive session.

By the end of the discussion, we were able to get the crux of Customer handling, troubleshooting tips, Technical Knowledge, Escalation Engineering and lot of friendship.

In the process of growth of our support process, we are further adapting/implementing the suggestions from the MS Escalation team to get acquainted with our customer expectations.

Author: Mekala Ramesh

Test Lead at BizTalk360 – Software Testing Engineer having diverse exposure in various features and application testing with a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of SDLC. Strong knowledge to establish the testing process from the scratch. Love to test the software product to deliver it with good quality. Strongly believes on “Testing goes beyond just executing the test protocol”. View all posts by Mekala Ramesh