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Communication Plan Guidelines - System Changes and Outages - Proposal
Created by: ITS Communication Committee
Approved: April 30, 2009
(print version)
INTRODUCTION
This document defines the operating procedures for developing and executing a communication plan to notify impacted users and associated support areas of normal maintenance, system restarts, and upgrades that result in potential service outages for enterprise systems supported by ITS. The following list contains the currently identified enterprise systems that require notification to users when outages occur. As new systems are implemented, please make sure they are added to this list.
- Academic Room Scheduling
- Administrative Financial and Human Resource Systems
- Cable TV
- Calendar
- Campus Directory
- Digital Signage
- Email
- Enterprise Portal
- Facilities Management System
- Help Desk Ticketing System
- Identity Management and Authentication Services (Active Directory, CatID)
- Imaging
- Learning Management System
- Multimedia Streaming
- Network Operations
- Student Information System
- Systems and Operations services (computer rooms, main University webspace - UNI home page and 1st level down, blog server, Drupal)
Voice Operations
- Web-based Reporting Systems (Discoverer, WebFOCUS)
PURPOSE
The purpose is to improve and ensure proper communication and preparation takes place. Communication is imperative so potentially affected persons are aware of the impact of each maintenance activity. This will help ensure consistency in conducting maintenance while minimizing impact.
COMMUNICATION PLAN DETAILS
The following guidelines are designed to help identify timeframes for outages. Specific communication plans will vary by system.
IMPACT TO SERVICE/MAINTENANCE WINDOW/TIMEFRAME FOR COMMUNICATION
| LEVEL I IMPACT |
| Impact to Service: | No anticipated outage of service |
| Examples: | Web server configuration changes, system restarts in a redundant environment |
| Maintenance Window: | Outside of peak system hours |
| Timeframe for Communication: | At least 24 hours in advance |
| Announcement: | Optional |
| Audience: | IT-Forum |
| Communication: | Email IT-Forum as needed |
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| LEVEL II IMPACT |
| Impact to Service: | Minimal downtime (< 60 minutes), Low risk for complications, High probability of success with a clear back out plan |
| Examples: | System restarts in non-redundant environment, firmware upgrades, equipment swaps, adjusting memory parms/heap size |
| Maintenance Window: | Outside of peak system hours |
| Timeframe for Communication: | At least 36 hours in advance |
| Announcement: | Required; initiated by staff closest to the outage source |
| Audience: | IT-Forum |
| Communication: | Email IT-Comm-Corner to post to Communications Corner
Email IT-Forum |
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| LEVEL III IMPACT |
| Impact to Service: | Moderate risk for complications and/or will require 1 - 6 hours of downtime during the week |
| Examples: | Restart of Collaboration Suite, reorganizing the database, moving to new hardware, WebCT hot fixes and service packs, rewire network closet, distributed switch re-patched |
| Maintenance Window: | Outside of peak system hours |
| Timeframe for Communication: | 48-72 hours in advance |
| Announcement: | Required; initiated by staff closest to the outage source with editing for general audience by Communications Corner admins |
| Audience: | IT-Announce |
| Communication: | Email IT-Comm-Corner in advance to prepare announcement/post to Communications Corner
Email IT-Announce
Email user lists (as appropriate)
Submit to UNIOnline |
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| LEVEL IV IMPACT |
| Impact to Service: | High risk for complications,
Weekend/interim break outage and/or outage exceeding 6 hours of downtime, difficult or complicated procedure |
| Examples: | MEMFIS annual upgrade, major facility outage, database conversions, new system implementations, major system software or hardware upgrades. |
| Maintenance Window: | Outside of peak system hours |
| Timeframe for Communication: | 1 week to community, 10 days to User Services
2-4 weeks on IT Maintenance Calendar as well as high level message to IT-Forum |
| Announcement: | Required; initiated by staff closest to the outage source with editing for general audience by Communications Corner admins |
| Audience: | IT-Announce |
| Communication: | Email IT-Comm-Corner in advance to prepare announcement/post to Communications Corner
Email IT-Announce
Email user lists (as appropriate)
Submit to UNIOnline
Recommend follow-up/status report communication to IT-Announce and IT-Comm-Corner |
EVENT SCHEDULING
A central maintenance calendar shall be maintained and posted on the ITS Communications Corner webpage. All normally scheduled maintenance should be recorded on the centralized maintenance calendar.
When planning an event, it is important to be aware of other critical university events that may affect the scheduled upgrade/change/outage.
CONTENTS OF COMMUNICATION (MESSAGE FORMAT)
Outage Date and Times
Title (Subject) – The headline should identify and capture the attention of impacted users and associated support areas and briefly summarize the event/incident/issue.
Body – The specifics of the maintenance event of what's happening, provide the basic answers and essential information related to the questions of who, what, when, where and why. When interrelated services are impacted it may become necessary to clarify what is up and what is down.
Services Affected – A list of the services that will be impacted by the event. The list of services should be written in terms that are easily recognized by affected users.
Additional Information – as needed.
Standard Footnote – directing reader to Communications Corner for additional information and announcements.
See Appendix A for sample messages.
COMMUNICATION METHODS
Email Lists See mail list summary for side-by-side comparison
IT-Forum for general discussion; owner: Computer Network Systems Manager; allowed to post: members-only
IT-Announce for proactive announcements; include IT-Forum, ITS, and those that want to subscribe (abandon the ITS-Liaisons); owner: Postmaster; allowed to post: ITS Staff and IT-Forum members; main editing group: responsibility of the Computer Consulting Center staff, however, in the case where CCC staff are not available, the individual is responsible for preparing and sending the announcement consistent with established standards.
IT-Alert for reactive announcements; include IT-Forum, ITS, ResNet manager, and those that want to subscribe; owner: Postmaster; allowed to post: members-only
Special Interest Groups (MEMFIS-Users, Calendar, Collab, etc)
IT-Comm-Corner for announcements to be posted to the Communications Corner website; owner: ITS US Director
Web
Communications Corner: CCC staff will be responsible for posting notices to the Communications Corner website.
MyUNIverse Portal Announcement: contact Data Access team
System Login Pages: contact system administrator
Electronic Publications
UNI Online: www.uni.edu/unionline
MyUNIverse News: www.uni.edu/unionline
My UNI Weekend: www.uni.edu/unionline
Additional methods to consider: University home page, table tents, bulletin boards, digital signage, blogs, etc.
POST MAINTENANCE/OUTAGE FOLLOW-UP
Follow-up messages are optional; unless there has been a significant change in the anticipated outage. Follow-up announcements are the responsibility of the originator. Once an event is completed or if an event is cancelled or rescheduled, the original message (on the ITS Communications Corner) should be appended to clearly show the event has been cancelled, rescheduled, or completed.
APPENDIX A – SAMPLE MESSAGES
Sample Message – LMS
Outage Date and Time: Wednesday, April 15, 2009, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m.
eLearning (Blackboard/WebCT) Maintenance
The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be restarted Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. to apply a system patch to the application servers. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.
Services Affected: Learning Management System and ePortfolios
Additional Information: NA
For more information see http://www.uni.edu/its/us/commcorner/announce/April152009LMS.pdf
Sample Message – Email
Email Outage, 7:00pm Friday, May 15th through 9:00am, Saturday, May 16th
ITS is upgrading the CatID and Email environment beginning Friday May 15th starting at 7:00PM and ending at 9:00AM Saturday May 16th.
During the maintenance all Email access will be unavailable. All other services using CatID (MyUNIverse, eLearning/WebCT, etc.) will continue to function normally, however, users will not be able to change their CatID password starting 1 hour prior to the upgrade nor during the upgrade process.
Additional Information and details on any changes to the maintenance event can be found at:
http://www.uni.edu/its/us/commcorner/announce/May152009Email.pdf
Sample Message – Network Operations
Network Outage 5/20, 6-6:30 am
The core campus network router will be upgraded May 20th from 6-6:30 am. At least one Internet outage lasting approximately 5 minutes will occur during this time. This will impact UNI campus traffic both inbound and outbound including core services like DNS and e-mail.
For more information see http://www.uni.edu/its/us/commcorner |
