As a Google Apps admin,
you can solve problems the easy way or the hard way.
Confusing back-and-forth email chains
that turn ten-minute issues into ten-day issues,
that's the hard way.
We're here to teach you the easy way to support
your Google Apps users,
because you don't want to spend two weeks trying to fix
your CEO's calendar.
And we don't want you to either.
Let's get down to business.
Here are some tips you should always use
to make troubleshooting Google Apps easy, fast, and seamless.
And if you do the math, you could even reduce
your case resolution time by as much as 75%,
if you follow our advice.
Our first tip is to always define the problem.
It's pretty difficult to solve a problem
if you're not entirely sure what it even is.
For instance, "Gmail isn't working"
is a pretty broad definition of a problem.
when john@example.com
clicks on the first message in his inbox, he receives a 776 error.
This occurred after he enabled the "Undosend" Gmail lab.
That's a lot better.
So what are the key differences here?
"Gmail isn't working" is a poorly defined problem.
As a troubleshooter, you want to narrow down
the possible causes by defining the issue at hand.
After defining the problem, we now know the user
is receiving a 776 error after enabling the UndoSend Lab.
So why don't you try to reproduce it
and take it from there?
In case you didn't notice, there's a pattern here
that's universal to all of troubleshooting.
First, define the problem.
And second, try to reproduce it.
Why is reproducing a problem so useful?
First, if you can reproduce it,
then you no longer have to rely on an end user for information.
Second, reproducing helps you define the scope of the problem.
To define the scope, all you really need to do
is ask, "How many?"
How many users is this problem affecting?
Just one, or everyone in the domain?
How many computers?
How many networks?
And if it's a mobile issue, how many mobile devices?
Oh, hey there, little guy.
By finding out the answer to how many,
you can draw some pretty important conclusions.
Like if the problem is only affecting one user,
there's a good chance the user
could be doing something incorrectly.
If the problem is only affecting one computer, phone, or tablet,
then you've got a local hardware issue.
And if everyone in your domain can consistently reproduce,
then maybe you should check your admin console
for any changes to your domain settings.
If you haven't resolved the issue through the process
of defining the problem and its scope,
don't panic.
We still have more tips to offer.
What's not the answer?
It's the one rule to rule them all
when it comes to troubleshooting.
It's really hard to know the answer to everything.
But if you know what isn't the answer to everything,
well, you'd know the answer, wouldn't you?
Think about that when it comes to Google Apps.
If you're ever stuck wondering why you can't send mail
to a specific person, start thinking about
why you can send mail to everyone else.
It's addition by subtraction.
Another good tip is to think about when the problem started.
If was working fine until a certain time,
then you need to think about what changed before that time.
Problems generally don't just appear out of the blue,
so think about things like: Did you change something
on your network?
Did the affected user change their password?
Or did we change one of our products?
And last, but probably the most important tip,
is to always check online.
It's a pretty big world out there,
and an even bigger internet,
so there's a good chance that the problem
you're dealing with has already been solved by someone else.
So always check the web.
Check the Google Apps Help Center
to troubleshoot a certain product.
Check our Known Issues page to see if your issue
has already been documented.
Check the Apps Status Dashboard if you think
there may be a Google Apps service outage.
Finally, if you're feeling lucky,
try searching the issue.
I hear there's a pretty decent site for that.
Hey, guess what.
You can think like a troubleshooter now.
You, my friend, are the synthesis of man and machine.
Now go watch our product-specific videos
to learn about troubleshooting specific Google Apps,
and as always, thanks for watching.