Purpose: Announce planned service outages that will affect a large portion of campus for several hours.1
This template is used for communicating with end users as well as technical support providers.
1 Some CIT services have existing methods for communicating directly with the users of their services. Outages of those services may be better handled using those methods.
download this information - Planned Service Outage template (MS Word)
From: Information Technologies Special Bulletins
Subject: Month Dates Outage [KEY SERVICE NAMES] -- for example, Apr. 4-9 Outage of All HR/Payroll systems
[DISTRIBUTION DISCLAIMER] (Please excuse duplicate messages you might receive as a result of CIT's efforts to provide this information to Net-Admin-L and CIT-Alert-L.)
Paragraph 1 to include this info:
- Date, start and end times of the outage, and services affected (if more than 5, consider listing most popular 2-3 services and then providing the entire list at the end of the message and/or pointing to a URL).
[WHEN APPLICABLE] Specify which groups of people and platforms are affected.
For example: From 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. on Saturday, August 4, Cornell's primary commodity Internet connection -- along with NLR, NeLR, Internet2, and the Teragrid -- will be unavailable. Cornell's backup commodity Internet connection will still be available, so there should *not* be any interruption in general Internet use for the campus community, or in the use of the campus networks.Paragraph 2 to include this info:
- Why the outage is needed (in high-level, low-tech terms)
[WHEN APPLICABLE] For more information, please see [URL]
For example: This outage is necessary so that One Communication, the provider of Cornell's primary Internet connection, can repair damaged fiber. CIT staff will test and verify the repaired fiber. Questions or concerns may be directed to Ed Kiefer at ehk8@cornell.edu or 254-6749.[Additional paragraphs as needed to provide adequate detail on the impact of the outage.]
Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Person's name (OPTIONAL)
Cornell Information Technologies
CIT division or group (OPTIONAL)
E-mail address (OPTIONAL)
URL (OPTIONAL)
For example:
Cornell Information Technologies
Network and Communication Services