How to use the G Suite Toolbox to debug common domain problems

Need some helping troubleshooting problems within the G Suite as well as some common domain problems? Google has a handful of free tools to help you do that — the G Suite Toolbox. Follow along below and we’ll show you some of the neat options you have for figuring out some of the common problems with your custom domain and/or website!

DNS

Messing around with DNS settings can be a serious pain, especially if you mix something up. One of the tools Google offers in the G Suite Toolbox is Check MX — a DNS validation tool which checks for common problems you might face. Simply click on the tool in G Suite Toolbox, enter your domain, and it’ll give you a list of results, giving you a pass, recommendation or failure for your specific DNS configuration.

Browserinfo

Browserinfo is another cool and fairly self-explanatory tool offered in the G Suite Toolbox. It’s a debugging tool that can be used to capture and obtain client-side information (e.g. what browser you’re on, your PC setup, language, plugins you’re using, etc). It’s primarily used to search for any problems that might be “impacting” your experience on the Internet.

Log Analyzer

You also have Log Analyzer, a tool that can analyze log files given by other Google products, such as logs from Chrome OS. The tool even shows you how to extract logs from certain products in order to upload them and have them analyzed. Of course, it isn’t able to analyze everything. There’s an entirely separate tool built for analyzing Google Drive logs for Mac and PC. Generally, this Drive-specific tool is able to handle much larger log files and give you a better analysis.

Video

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byq-4FkNMr4]

Closing

These are just a few of the tools found in the G Suite Toolbox. There’s plenty more, such as Dig for looking up very specific DNS configurations as well as Messageheader, which allows you to analyze SMTP message headers — just copy and paste the email header, Messageheader will analyze it, and then give you a few different results for the source of a delay or problem. You can find a full list of tools for troubleshooting the G Suite at the G Suite Toolbox page here.