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Folks, Hmmm, I think this is an example of rising expectations. :-) Six months ago, we didn't have a mechanism for folks to check on current outages. When we set up help/status we heard that computer support people needed to know not only about outages right now, but also outages that had been resolved. So we added that functionality. The theory is this: Your dean says "Was there a network problem this morning?" or "Is there a problem with ANGEL today?" You go to help.msu.edu/status. You scan for current outages. You see none. You then click on the link for archived (ie resolved, it isn't down any more) outage reports. In a couple of clicks, you know about all the outages that are ongoing now, and all those within the last week. It seems to me that this will answer the questions that we heard at the last face to face NAG meeting are asked by your faculty, staff, and management. We don't want the CURRENT outages page to list RESOLVED outages; that page is so people can know what is down now or is scheduled to be down soon. As Doug indicates, it should be easy enough for folks to click on one more link to find out about recent outages. If you are interested in more detailed archive information, you can click to open the time window to: Last 30 days Last 90 days Last 365 days You can sort by the system that failed and you can filter by whether past outages where scheduled or not. We are continuing to refine out help/status works. The entries you see from September are still there because they are STILL ongoing problems. We're working on splitting off a new category so that the first page of help.msu.edu/status will show three main items: -- System outages (ie a major system is down right now) -- Bulletins (ie something significant of campus-wide interest w/r/t IT, e.g. a new major virus threat. A number of the items now listed as Outages would be filed as Bulletins; eg AOL blocking Pilot mail.) -- Scheduled maintenance (ie planned service on a production system. Usually these items will be scheduled for off hours.) We're certainly open to suggestions as we evolve these tools to meet the information needs we've heard from customers. Maybe after we have Bulletins implemented would be near the time of the next NAG meeting -- where we can go over help/status face to face. Keep those expectations rising. :-) If you know of examples from other institutions whose Web-based IT outages reporting systems are worth emulating, please let us know the specifics. Thanks, /rich >I am requesting that outage reports be left up on the main page for at least a > week before being archived then. > >There is information on the status page from September and October. To have > archived an outage report this quickly doesn't serve the needs of those who > have to answer questions from patrons and faculty. > >Don Bosman >Information Technologist >Michigan State University Libraries >517-432-6123 ext 233 >[log in to unmask] > > > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Doug Nelson [mailto:[log in to unmask]] >Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 12:32 PM >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: dialup DNS problems > > >> >> I thought that campus-wide outages were going to be posted on the Computer >> Lab Status page? http://help.msu.edu/status/ There is nothing about an >> outage posted, therefore it never happened(?) > >Go to that page, then click on "archived status history". Look for an >entry entitled "Off campus network connections down" and dated 10/30/2003 >11:51 pm. > > >Doug Nelson [log in to unmask] >Network Manager Ph: (517) 353-2980 >Computer Laboratory http://www.msu.edu/~nelson/ >Michigan State University