The feature that I have found to be most valuable is the entire alert notification configuration, having an external system to trigger events that will process the alert to the supporting team. If a system is down, then you need to get its attention. Sometimes, it cannot wait until the next day. Therefore, how xMatters provides this type of integration is critical.
What is your primary xMatters use case?
We use xMatters to handle system alerts. Generally, we use xMatters as an automated process in particular systems. For example, if the source detected an issue, it will use xMatters to alert the team member to resolve that issue.
xMatters is utilized as part of our system monitoring and alerting.
From the support team side, my focus is more account management, which is my primary task.
How has xMatters helped your organization?
We use xMatters logs for troubleshooting, e.g., to see when an event is triggered, the process of that event, who was notified, and whether the delivery of the message was successful or not. If we cannot resolve a user’s inquiry, then we will always work with xMatters’ support engineering team to conduct further analysis.
Based on my support experience, it seems like our end users can integrate xMatters into event notifications and other applications successfully. Occasionally, we get support inquiries, essentially trying to understand how a particular functionality will work. If the functionality failed to work as expected, then we have always been able to get solutions from xMatters’ support engineering team.
Here and there, we have made use of coding to expand the flexibility or functionality of xMatters workflows. I have created some custom workflow setups. For example, as part of account management, we do a scheduled process that will notify all the inactive users by sending out a notification via xMatters. It will ask them if they still need their account or not. Overall, the workflow is very simple, and the one that I built is not complex.
xMatters supports our usage and what our end users are trying to accomplish. As long as all our end users are supported on their operations, then as a support team, we are good with the product.
What is most valuable about xMatters?
The feature that I have found to be most valuable is the entire alert notification configuration, having an external system to trigger events that will process the alert to the supporting team. If a system is down, then you need to get its attention. Sometimes, it cannot wait until the next day. Therefore, how xMatters provides this type of integration is critical.
It is well-rounded, and though an individual will have to learn the UI, it is easy to set up. The end user team has quite an extensive customized integration with other applications. Thus, I can only assume that our end users are heavily using xMatters.
xMatters is extremely scalable and extensible. The design gives you a lot of freedom on the applications that you want to integrate with xMatters. Therefore, they already have a large inventory of different application templates that you can utilize.
How long has your organization used xMatters?
I have been using it for about a year and a half. I believe my company has been using xMatters for quite a while. About a year and a half ago, the global infrastructure application support team took over the ownership, supporting the product usage.
What do you think about the stability of xMatters?
The xMatters application is very stable. They also always keep the customer up to date with advanced notifications, e.g., if there is any scheduled system downtime. Usually, those downtimes are minutes. However, they will notify their clients when those things happen and are always able to provide the root cause, such as what took place and why the system was impacted. So we never get left in the dark, trying to see what is going on.
All the maintenance is done from their end. They also proactively reach out when there is something causing some type of configuration abnormality in xMatters, which would be caused by perhaps one of our configurations. They will proactively reach out, and say, “Hey, you probably want to get in touch with your end user and help them fix it accordingly.” However, that is really rare. In the past year and a half, this happened just one time. There is one team who has a workflow that contained an element that is no longer supported, and that was resolved very quickly
What do you think about the scalability of xMatters?
xMatters is extremely scalable and extensible. The design gives you a lot of freedom on the applications that you want to integrate with xMatters. Therefore, they already have a large inventory of different application templates that you can utilize.
There has never been an interruption because the traffic and the volume are high. This means that our external system can properly be integrated with xMatters, which will handle an alert without delay nor compromising the quality or timeliness of our delivery.
Our end user can be a group supervisor, meaning that they are the people who manage the group and oncall rosters. There are also developer roles. Those are the users who are doing workflow with development and integration setup. Lastly, there are just general users who are part of the on-call roster. They will get notifications when something happens that they need to take action against.
How are customer service and support?
xMatters doesn’t own our content. They provide support activity, assisting our users in configuration, but xMatters itself is very intuitive.
I would rate the support as nine or above (out of 10). xMatters’ support engineering team is bar none with the service that they provide. It is always a pleasure working with them because they get stuff done. Other vendors need to use xMatters’ support model as the model to follow.
They are very detail-oriented. They are always clear and concise. I can share their findings with my end user because they provide them in layman’s terms, even nontechnical end users can understand them.
How was the initial setup?
We went through the training material. It is like learning any other application. For example, if you are going to be doing workflow development, then you need to understand the workflow design and UI. Same as if you are going to set up a group, you need to know how to set up on-call scheduling and learn how to manage your team’s roster for the group.
Overall, it is very intuitive and straightforward. xMatters is one of the applications that does provide a lot of online documentation, in which they do an excellent job.
What was your ROI?
xMatters on-call schedules have helped to reduce Sev-1 incidents in our organization. This is based on users using the latest incident alert functionality to get their activities done.
What other advice do you have?
In regards to all the functionality xMatters provides, I learn every day while working with end users. I like to say that I would never consider myself as an expert of tools, instead I am a jack-of-all-trades. That is why my learning will never stop.
I would rate them as 8.5 out of 10 since no application is perfect.
About xMatters
xMatters is a service reliability platform that helps DevOps, SREs, and operations teams automate workflows, ensure infrastructure and applications are always working, and rapidly deliver products at scale. Our code-free workflow builder, adaptive approach to incident management, and real-time performance analytics all support a single goal: the happiness of your customers.
This case study originated from Peer Spot. You can find the original review here.
