Memory hook: Scope, status, logs, reproduce.
Must remember
- First determine who, what, when and where is affected. Check the Workspace Status Dashboard before making local changes during a service incident.
- For missing mail, trace delivery with Email Log Search and inspect headers, routing, quarantine, spam rules and user forwarding. Admin Toolbox can help inspect DNS and message authentication.
- For access failures, separate account status, license, service enablement, password/2SV, SSO and context-aware policy. Avoid resetting unrelated controls until the failing layer is known.
- For Drive, inspect owner, shared-drive membership, external-sharing rules, storage and desktop/offline sync. For Calendar, inspect time zones, synchronization and free/busy versus detailed permissions.
- Use the Meet quality tool to correlate poor calls with network, device and media conditions. Review audit, usage, storage and device reports for wider patterns.
- Record reproduction steps, exact time/time zone, affected users, error codes and relevant sanitized logs. HAR files may contain tokens or personal information; redact them before sharing with support. Recovery of deleted content has service-specific windows.
Choose under exam pressure
| Requirement | Choice and reason |
|---|---|
| One user cannot receive a message | Trace the message before changing organization-wide mail routing. |
| All users suddenly fail in one service | Check service health and recent tenant-wide changes. |
Traps
- A screenshot alone rarely provides enough timing and trace context.
- HAR files are not automatically safe to post publicly.
Active recall
1. Which tool traces Gmail delivery?
Email Log Search, supplemented by message headers and routing settings.
2. How separate an outage from a local issue?
Compare affected scope and the vendor status dashboard, then reproduce from another context.
3. What helps diagnose poor Meet quality?
Call quality telemetry together with device and network conditions.
4. Why record a time zone?
It allows logs from different systems to be correlated correctly.
5. What should a support case contain?
Reproduction, impact, timestamps, identifiers, sanitized logs and steps already attempted.