Objective
A process whereby other U of S College IT Support units, who provide end-user support, are notified and kept abreast of ICT service
disruptions.
Outcome
Those working with end users will be in a better
position to provide support during a disruption.
*This process is not to replace other mailing lists or communication procedures already in place.
Process
Upon notification of a significant outage, it is
the ICT Help Desk, Client Services, responsibility to create a Global Ticket and
notify college and administration IT Support units via an opt
in mailing list. This notification will be sent as soon as possible -- notwithstanding a small delay to assess
the scope of the problem, or to determine if it can be quickly solved. Responsibility for ongoing communication
regarding the outage remains with the ICT Help Desk.
Changes to the severity, scope, or estimated
recovery time should initiate a follow-up communication to the units. This includes updating a recovery time from
unknown to known, when a recovery time has been exceeded (what is the new
time?), or when the services involved or the users impacted have changed.
The ICT Help
Desk will create a Tracks ticket with the template for IT outages: priority high/critical,
global. On creation, the information contained
within the ticket will be sent to the opt in mailing list.
The IT
Support units can communicate back via the Tracks system by replying to the
notification email. The subject line
should not be changed, or should contain the keywords ISSUE=(originating ticket
number) PROJ=1 in the subject line.
Communications
The following communications will be sent
to the opt-in mailing list:
Informative Alert
Informative alerts will be sent after a short or weekend outage -- notifying that a situation occurred and is now resolved -- so that the recipients are aware there was an issue.
Current and Extended Issues
- Initial notification of disruption (as per
template below)
- Updates regarding any substantial changes to the
scope or expected duration of the disruption.
- Final notification that normal service resumed (including a brief explanation of the cause and resolution, if
possible)
Template
Messages sent to the list
should contain the following information:
|
Subject: (Title)
Begin Time:
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Time
issue started
|
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Affected Users:
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Everyone,
students, people in a particular building, people off-campus.
|
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Details:
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Detail
on service and the problem,
|
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Workaround:
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How
the users can continue their functions.
|
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Estimated Time for Resolution:
When
will normal service resume?
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e.g.
Within minutes, an hour, by 3pm, unknown at this time
|
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Next Update:
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Subscribe to alerts
U of S IT Support Units may subscribe to the alerts notification list at ict_alerts .
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