Global Support working with ASEs
Global Support working with ASEs
ASEs rely on other SEs to help with their accounts and tickets in a number of different situations. To be sure that you are able to contribute well when you encounter one of these situations, please familiarize yourself with the information presented on this page.
Contributing to ASE tickets
New non-emergency tickets
For many ASE accounts, all new, non-emergency tickets are automatically assigned to their ASE. Check the org note that is automatically inserted into each ticket to determine whether tickets for that account are automatically assigned, and how you can contribute.
See what to do when the ASE is unavailable and what to do if they came in requesting a different region.
New emergency tickets
Regardless of when an emergency request is submitted by an ASE’s account, the DRI for the emergency is the on-call support engineer. The only process change is that the on-call support engineer should notify the ASE. The best way to do this is simply to ping the ASE’s Slack handle in the emergency’s Slack thread. After that, the on-call engineer should work the emergency in the normal way.
Guidance for ASEs regarding emergencies from their accounts can be found on the ASE emergencies page
Pre-ASE tickets
Tickets that predate the introduction of an ASE for an account are treated a little differently because of their individual histories. Let the customer decide who they’d like to work on this problem with - the existing assignee or the ASE. If they’d like the ASE to own it, then the current assignee and the ASE should communicate with each other so the ASE knows the history of the problem handled in the ticket, the customer’s expectations, and anything else the current assignee would find useful to share.
When the ASE is unavailable
An ASE can be unavailable for a variety of reasons such as being off or having
a different Support priority at the moment. When that happens and you notice a
ticket of theirs that will breach or was missed, feel free to respond to that
ticket yourself, but be sure to leave the ASE as the assignee and cc
yourself until they return. Upon their return, they’ll take the ticket.
Tickets in a different region
Tickets in a different region will still get assigned to the ASE. If they’ll breach before the ASE gets online then that means the ASE is unavailable so follow this process.
Covering for an ASE when they are absent
When an ASE is planning time off, they will first find one or more other support engineers to take care of their accounts during their absence. The ASEs use their PTO planning workflow for arranging coverage. Here’s what covering for an ASE means for you:
- Balance your workload to make room for the potential work with the ASE accounts. Specifically, decrease your non-ASE ticket work by 25% for each account you cover.
- You would be responsible only for working tickets for the accounts, and not for performing any proactive work, attenting any regularly-scheduled meetings, or doing other non-ticket work.
- Configure Zendesk to notify you when new tickets are opened for each account (the ASE will help you to do this).
- Expect to be pinged by the on-call team when any emergencies come in for the accounts. You don’t have to take the emergency, but be prepared to offer any information you have to help the on-call engineer. in for the accounts.
- If you will cover two or more accounts, please work with your manager to find another engineer to take over your on-call.
- Review each account with the ASE before their absence:
- For each active ticket, be sure you understand the history and the next steps. Additionally, add yourself to the Cc list.
- Ask the ASE to tell you who the important internal and external contacts are, and how best to work with them
- Ask the ASE to summarize the account’s GitLab environment and to share any available document, issues, or other resources that are relevant for working on tickets.
- When the ASE returns, meet with them to review the work you did on their behalf, and to transfer to them any tickets that were opened during their absence as needed.
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