Naturally, maintenance and incident events can potentially occur on or affect multiple services and we want to support this customer need. This article explains how to configure and manage multi-service maintenance events for expected downtime in StatusHub. Let’s begin!

Creating Maintenance Events for Multiple Services

To create a multi-service maintenance event, first, click on the Add Maintenance (Wrench) option on your status page for the appropriate hub.

Next, you will need to add the details of your maintenance event. This includes the following:

• Title - Click on the field and enter a title for the maintenance event. Note: You may also click on the Page Icon to choose a template, which will fill in the form with the template’s information. See Maintenance Templates to learn more.
  
• Starting At (GMT +00:00) - Select a Date and Time for the event to start. To select these items, use the Calendar and/or Clock options to the right of the current value or simply click and type in the appropriate information.
• Ending At (GMT +00:00) - Select a Date and Time for the event to end. To select these items, use the Calendar and/or Clock options to the right of the current value or simply click and type in the appropriate information.
  
  
• Message - Click on the text field and enter a message to be provided to subscribers

The next step will be to add the groups of services or individual services that will be affected by this maintenance event. Click on Add Services to make a selection.

In many cases, one problem will often affect other services and this option allows you to keep everyone informed. You may choose all services for one or more groups, a single group, or individual services belonging to different groups. The individual statuses may then be configured for each service.

In the example below, services within the Services Group are displayed as selectable options. For this example, two of the four services will be chosen: Company Website and Database & Servers.

After the services have been selected, three status radios will appear to the left of the service name to allow you to set the status per service. By default, they will be set to the first selection: Green (Operating Normally).

To set the individual status for a service, click on the appropriate option to the left of the service name. The statuses may be set to the following:

• Green - Operating Normally
• Orange - Performance Issues
• Red - Service Disruption

In the example below, the Company Website has been set to “Service Disruption” and Database & Servers has been set to “Performance Issues”. For this scenario, the company website is dependent on a database or server that the team is currently performing maintenance on. The company website will experience a service disruption while the maintenance is being performed.

An option is also provided for electing to “not send notifications to subscribers”. We refer to this as “silent mode”. It is disabled by default and you may check the box for this option to enable it.

When enabled, subscribers will NOT receive a notification regarding this maintenance event. This option is beneficial when updating a maintenance event where the subscribers do not need to be notified of the change.

Once finished, click Set Maintenance to complete the process. You may also click on Cancel to exit this form without creating the maintenance event.

Note: The statuses of the selected services will appear within your StatusHub (i.e. Dashboard) as well as on the Status Page for subscribers.

In the example below, the Blue Circle and Wrench are displayed to the right of each affected service to show scheduled maintenance for the service. The Red Circle to the left of Company Website shows the service will be disrupted during the maintenance window. The Orange Circle to the left of Database & Servers shows the service will experience performance issues during the maintenance window.

Modifying Maintenance Events

Once the maintenance event has been created for the required services or groups of services, you will be able to update this event from the StatusHub Dashboard. This includes changing the status of assigned services, adding additional details to the message, and adding new services to the maintenance event. Click on the Wrench Icon to update a maintenance event.

Please note that when more than one maintenance event has been scheduled for the same service or group of services, multiple icons will be present. In the example above, only one is displayed next to the affected services.

The Scheduled Maintenance form will be provided for altering the details of the chosen event. Here you may update the Title, Start Time, End Time, Message, and Service information.

When extending the time for a maintenance event where the change will not further affect subscribers such as between 1:00 and 4:00 AM, we recommend checking the option titled “Do not send notification to subscribers.” When this option is enabled (checked), subscribers will not receive an email regarding the change.

However, if subscribers should be notified of an extended service disruption or other change to a maintenance event, this option should be left unchecked.

When updating a maintenance event where users will be notified of the change, we recommend including text such as the following as part of the message sent to subscribers: “This is an update. The maintenance window has been extended.”

Updating Service Statuses

Next, you may update the status of a service by clicking on the appropriate status radio (from left to right):

• Operating Normally
• Performance Issues
• Service Disrupted

Once finished, click Save maintenance to save your changes.  In the example below, the status of Database & Servers has been changed to green to show the problem is resolved. The status of Company Website has been changed to “Performance Issues” to show that the website is still having a problem.

Adding More Services

To add another service or group of services, click on Add Services located near the bottom of the Scheduled Maintenance form. Select the desired service or group of services by clicking on its

The selected service will be added and it’s status will need to be configured. Click on the appropriate radio to configure the service status and then click Save Maintenance to finish. For this example, 3rd Party Website has been added and the status has been set to “Service Disruption”.

Subscribers will see a page similar to the following when viewing the status site for your services.

We hope this article has been helpful when it comes to configuring multi-service scheduled maintenance events! As always, feel free to contact support for additional assistance.