New Web site for campus IT outages

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

DoIT has created a new web site to publish information about planned and unplanned campus information technology (IT) service outages. The site will help campus departments, IT staff and end users plan for and understand when and why services are unavailable.

The site URL is: www.doit.wisc.edu/outages

Information on the outage page will be split into two categories: current unplanned outages, and a calendar of planned, or scheduled, service outages.

Unplanned outages (e.g., WiscMail not working) will summarize any known details of the outage, who is affected and when service is expected to be restored. Depending on the nature of the outage, additional technical details and updates will be made available.

Planned outages (e.g., scheduled service maintenance windows, upgrades) will describe which services and users will be affected, when, and for how long. Future scheduled outages will be posted to the calendar as dates are set.

"By listing major outages well into the future, researchers and other UW staff who are working on major projects that rely on the campus network to succeed will be better able to plan their projects," says Victor Ponelis, change manager at DoIT.

Previously, unplanned outages were published on the DoIT Help Desk site and planned outages were periodically posted to the DoIT home page and/or Help Desk.

Campus users are encouraged to bookmark the site URL.