Tips to help your inquiries to the support team get resolved quicker

Hello, Mackerel team CRE Nishiyama (id:tukaelu) here.

Have you ever searched through our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) or contacted our support team with questions regarding Mackerel? Well, the FAQ site and the Feedback form have both been recently updated!

Mackerel FAQ

And although the new feedback form is now more detailed than before, entering the correct information into the required fields is important if you want a speedy resolution.

Today we'll be taking a look at a few pointers that will help prompt a quick resolution when asking a question via the feedback form!

Make use of the ‘Subject’ field

The Subject field doesn’t need any new explanation per se, but one of the handy new features of the feedback form is that it now displays a list of suggested FAQ pages that seem to be relevant to the content entered in the subject line!

The suggested FAQ articles are listed like shown in the image above. Be sure to check for any articles that might be related!

Go into detail when filling in the Description

As for the Description of your inquiry, including the following points may lead to a quicker resolution.

Specify environment information

Including the following points detailing the environment of the host to which you are inquiring about will benefit the resolution turnaround.

OS type, version
Version of mackerel-agent
Plugin name, version (※If using an official plugin)
Service name for inquiries regarding various integration
- Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, Azure Functions etc.

Also, if you’re monitoring middleware with a plugin, inform us of the software name and version.

Specify the situation, status, etc.

Describe in detail the event or problem you are experiencing. Try to be as clear as possible about what operations were performed and what events occurred.

NG
- mackerel-agent doesn’t start up. What are the possible causes?
OK
- When mackerel-agent is restarted with the attached settings, the following error occurs and does not start up.

You can also attach files to the new feedback form. Attaching information like the following to your inquiry can help lead to a quicker resolution.

mackerel-agent logs
mackerel-agent.conf
- Masking things like API keys is not a problem
User investigated content, executed commands, results, etc.
Screenshots that can be verified from the web console etc.

Include information that can be verified from the Mackerel Web Console

If what you are inquiring about can be verified from the Mackerel web console, please include the URL.

Host details URL
Alert details URL
Monitor details URL etc.

The review of your inquiry on our end will go a lot smoother if you can provide us with a URL that can be verified from the web console, such as a limited time graph URL. If this information is available, please make sure to attach it when contacting us.

mackerel.io

Other Tips

In addition to the everything mentioned above, please consider the following points.

1 question per case

It may be quicker to have one question answered at a time.

If you have multiple questions that are all related, of course it’s better to consolidate them into one inquiry. But if this is not the case, you might try splitting up your questions into multiple inquiries.

An inquiry may be difficult to investigate if related to a retired host or deleted monitor

We recommend trying to reserve the resources (hosts, monitors, etc.) related to your inquiry as much as possible.

And please inform us if deleted or any changes were made.

You can add recipients (Cc) to receive a reply

You can ‘Cc’ additional recipients of the response by specifying email addresses separated by commas(,) in the "Additional email addresses to receive replies" field of the feedback form.

This can be useful for sharing the support team’s response among your team or people of concern.