Monitoring, Troubleshooting, and Maintenance
Monitoring questions cover the technical workflows that keep the instance healthy (tracking, deliverability, cleanup, billing) and the logs and dashboards used to diagnose issues. Know where to look: workflow logs and audit, delivery logs/broadLog statuses, tracking logs, server logs, and process/queue monitoring. Understand delivery failure diagnosis (bounce types, MTA errors, exclusion reasons), workflow error transitions, and stuck/scheduled job handling. Candidates must know database maintenance (purging, indexing, statistics) and alerting on failed technical workflows.
Traps: assuming a delivery "sent" means delivered (check broadLog statuses: sent, received, failed, quarantined); ignoring quarantine management that blocks future sends; and overlooking that a failed technical workflow silently degrades tracking or cleanup. Another classic: confusing exclusion reasons with hard bounces.
Rule of thumb: monitor technical workflows first - if tracking or cleanup is down, everything downstream suffers. Worked example: a sudden drop in open rates - check the tracking technical workflow ran, verify trackingLog inserts, review broadLog statuses for a spike in soft bounces, and confirm the quarantine list didn't balloon, rather than assuming a content problem.