Supporting Drupal-as-a-Service: Providing Tech Support to Drupal Devs
In 2019, I gave a presentation at the Twin Cities Drupal Camp while working at the University Minnesota in a support role that sprawled out in many different directions. One of those directions was supporting people who used the Drupal content management service for hosting whatever website their heart (or manager) desired.
The people, in this case, spanned from undergrads setting up a website for a PI in a research lab, to seasoned web developers working on robust sites to support academic services for the entirety of the university. There was an in-house built "Drupal Lite" version that walled-off the more tedious parts of running a website, to the "Drupal Enterprise" version where you were pretty much setting up the site from nothing, and at the time, there were over 1,500 different websites under the umbrella.
I wasn't a software developer or infrastructure engineer in this role; I was a "tier 2 support consultant" (i.e., advanced support, level-2 support, or what have you). We worked with professors, students, web devs, office administrators, assistant deans, you name it. And it was a genuinely wonderful job, too!
I was approached by one of the coordinators of TC Drupal Camp (who also happened to be a frequent "customer" of my team) about putting together one or two different proposals around Drupal support and management. I had done smaller presentations and talks for various user groups or communities of practice, but this was the first one that made me feel that weird "excited nervous" feeling! So I took a chance and got my manager to front the approved time-off for me to both present at and attend the conference.
Below is my small contribution to the event:
How do we support 500+ custom Drupal sites and 1000+ Drupal “Gardens” at the University of Minnesota? Where is the line drawn on supporting custom code? What about complex Drupal views and other site structures? Hear about how the Drupal Support Team at UMN has worked to improve their support for hundreds of developers and non-developers alike—without prior Drupal experience required.
From setting up new dev sites to coordinating production cutovers; from managing security certificates to code deployments and cloning of environments, the Drupal Support Team doesn’t provide just a technology named Drupal—rather a full service offering from the conception to launch to retirement of a site.
Learning Objectives & Outcomes:
Identify and discuss the intermediary role between Drupal site developers and infrastructure/platform engineers.
Feel free to check out the slides as well.
Source: TC Drupal Camp / Archive