Maintenance windows

Most notices on a service portal announce a time: "the VPN is down Saturday 10:00 to 12:00", "we're closed on Monday". Customers in other countries then have to work out what that means for them. Portal Notices does it for them.

How it works

1. Start a notice from the Planned maintenance template, or tick This notice announces a time window on any notice.
2. Set when the window starts and ends, in your own time.
3. Publish. Every customer sees the window in their own time zone and language, with the time zone named — for example *Sat, Oct 10, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM GMT+9*.

Before the window starts, the notice is marked Scheduled. While it runs, In progress. When it ends, the notice ends too, unless you set a different Until date.

Announcing ahead

Set Show from to start showing the notice days before the window — for example a week ahead. Leave it empty to show it from now.

Outages

For unplanned outages, use the Outage template: it's urgent and customers can't close it, so nobody misses it and fewer duplicate requests come in. When the issue is fixed, end it and post the Resolved template.

Regular hours

For hours that repeat every week, such as weekend support, use Repeat every week instead of a window. A notice can have a window or a weekly repeat, not both.

Per portal or per client

Combine a window with targeting: only on the portals affected, only on the request types that depend on the system, or only for the customer organizations involved.