MATRIXX Pairs Files.com With Zendesk for Revenue-Critical Telecom Diagnostics

MATRIXX Software builds the converged charging platform that mobile operators run their subscription revenue through: the system that rates and charges calls, data sessions, and subscriptions in real time, as they happen. Its global support organization stands behind the product those operators bill through. When a charging system misbehaves, revenue is at stake immediately, and root-cause investigation runs on data: large logs and diagnostic files that have to cross between the operator's environment and the MATRIXX engineers working the case. The exchange also has to remain ready for external engineers who might not use it for months, then need it immediately.

Escalation Data That Email and Tickets Were Never Built to Carry

Before Files.com, that data traveled through email and the ticketing system. Zendesk is the support organization's system of record for escalations, and it is good at that job. Neither it nor email was built to carry large diagnostic files, and the logs from a real-time charging system are large. So the most time-sensitive work the support organization does opened with the wrong problem: engineers on both sides of an escalation spent the first stretch of an investigation working out how to move the file instead of reading it, while an operator's revenue system misbehaved.

The diagnosis was simple: MATRIXX was asking channels built for conversation to carry data.

Engineers Who Do Nothing for Months, Then Need Access Immediately

The fix was harder than it looks, because of who has to use it. The people sending those files are not MATRIXX employees. They are operator-side engineers, spread across customers worldwide, and their usage pattern is defined by the incidents themselves.

“They typically do nothing, but when they need it, they really need it.”

That pattern rules out anything set up per incident. The exchange has to face external users, hold their access ready through months of silence, and absorb a burst the moment an escalation lands. And a support organization for a revenue-critical product has no business running its own transfer infrastructure on the side. What MATRIXX needed was a hosted exchange with accounts provisioned ahead of need, controlled access for external engineers, and a place beside the ticketing system rather than instead of it.

MATRIXX selected Files.com as that host, and the exchange has run on it since August 2017.

Zendesk Keeps the Ticket, Files.com Carries the Data

The design is a division of labor. The escalation lives in Zendesk, where it always has. When the data outgrows what a ticket can hold, it moves through a dedicated MATRIXX site on Files.com, which exists for exactly that job.

Access is what makes it work at this population. MATRIXX runs sign-in through Okta, with SCIM provisioning keeping accounts in step with its directory, and several hundred operator-side and support engineers hold standing accounts on the site. Access exists before the incident does. Storage on the site stays light, because the files serve an investigation and then their job is done: the site is a standing channel, not an archive, and its value is that it is ready.

Nearly a Decade in Production With Nothing to Rework

With the Files.com channel in place, MATRIXX replaced an exchange improvised over email and ticket attachments with one that is ready before the incident starts.

• Large diagnostic logs can move as soon as an escalation begins, so engineers can start reading the data instead of spending the opening stretch arranging a transfer.
• Mid-escalation access is a sign-in, not a setup request. An operator engineer who has touched nothing for months uploads the logs the moment they are needed.
• Diagnostic data from operators' charging systems no longer travels by email.
• Growing the operator base does not mean building anything. A new customer's engineers are provisioned onto the same exchange that already serves every other operator.

The workflow has also survived time and turnover. Charlton inherited it and has never had to rework it.

“The integration was done before I arrived, and I've not had to play around with that.”

The Ticket Never Has to Be the File System

That is the lesson MATRIXX's setup carries for any support organization: the ticketing system does not have to carry the data. Keep the ticket where it is, and put a dedicated file layer beside it.