topic Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence in Plusnet Feedback

It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

TORPC — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 02:00:08 GMT

For those of us that do not use other means like Twitter et al
It would of been nice if PlusNet could put a sticky in the announcement thread relating to the planned week long maintenance
After all that is what the announcement thread is for (is it not)
I had to find out the hard way after I suffered issue(s) then went to make a ticket then seen www.plus.net is down for maintenance, followed the twitter feed & seen this planned nightly maintenance that is most likely to affect customers NationWide

Not even any notification about the www.plus.net down for maintenance that I could see

[quote= http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1396875312.htm?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter]Planned BT Network Maintenance - Week commencing 7th April 2014
Broadband
Posted on: Monday 7 April 2014, 13:55
When's this work happening?
Early hours of most days this week.
What does it affect?
Broadband connectivity.
How long will it take?
Up to six hours each time.
What does the work involve?
We've received notifications from our suppliers about maintenance work that is scheduled to take place in the following areas this week. This work typically takes place between Midnight and 6am.
8th April
London Colindale, Coalville and Newcastle upon Tyne
9th April
London Colindale, Langholm and Reading
10th April
London Hornchurch
11th April
London Hornchurch, London South Kensington, Acomb and Birmingham
Although these are the areas we have been notified of, due to the nature of the broadband network these outages may affect customers nationwide. There are also a number of smaller exchange works most nights of the week that may cause smaller outages at individual exchanges.
Am I likely to notice the work?
Yes, there's a chance that you may be disconnected from the internet for a period of time during the maintenance window.
Is there anything else I need to know?
Any customers having problems connecting once the maintenance is complete are advised to log into their router interface and click connect.
Kind Regards,
Chris Purvey
Customer Support

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

ejs — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 05:26:33 GMT

A similar service status message about BT network maintenance gets posted pretty much every week, there's always overnight work being done somewhere.

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

Mayfly — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 06:01:28 GMT

I signed up and get the service notice emails regularly.

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

Pettitto — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:10:39 GMT

If you want to ensure that you're kept up to date on Planned Maintenance and any other Service Announcements, it might be worth signing up to these alerts vis E-mail at http://usertools.plus.net/status/email.php

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

Oldjim — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:31:03 GMT

or the rss feed

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

eblakeborough — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:54:21 GMT

There wasn't an announcement because it wasn't planned... Any maintenance that we're aware of is posted on the service status page as others have posted.

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

Oldjim — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:57:53 GMT

That is odd since I received a notification at 13.53 on Monday even though Chris got the date wrong in the body of the message

Quote
When is this work happening?
Overnight tonight into tomorrow morning, Tuesday 8th April.
What does it affect?
Access to our website and internal systems.
How long will it take?
About seven hours.
What does the work involve?
We're rolling a number of system updates.
Am I likely to notice the work?
You may do, yes. Our website will be unavailable between 11:00pm tonight through to 6:00am tomorrow morning (Tuesday 7th) and holding pages will be in place. Our customer support centre will have limited access to customers' account details during this time.
Is there anything else I need to know?
No.
Kind regards,
Chris Purvey
Customer Support

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

Kelly — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:59:26 GMT

It was planned.
There was an unscheduled on Sunday evening/Monday morning which I suspect Ed is getting confused with.

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

TORPC — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 15:27:43 GMT

May I ask WHY do WE have to SIGN UP for SOMETHING we DO NOT use them when we USE the FORUM that announcement(s) can be made in the respective thread ?
It was announced via your twitter feed

at the time I originally made posted the above it showed approx 11hrs it had already been up on Twitter
Therefore that would make it now approximately 24hsr ago that the twitter feed was notified, yet not one notification in the forum that your staff frequents
By putting notifications on all public avenues would clearly reduce time for staff answering queries about the maintenance
What about the customer base that does not use any means of the forum / twitter et al that will be affected, a nice email would not go a miss either.
There should be no excuses for lack of communication in this day & age (Unless the new call centre has gone backwards in time to Ye Olde Penny stamp days)
There are clearly already moans & groans about the call / ticket wait times, lets try & reduce them as best as is possible
To clarify
What I am saying is
If Twitter can be informed why can't the forums via their Announcement thread (That is what the Announcement thread is for (correct me if I am wrong)

Quote
announcement
əˈnaʊnsm(ə)nt/
noun
noun: announcement; plural noun: announcements
1.
a formal public statement about a fact, occurrence, or intention.
"the minister was about to make an announcement"
synonyms: statement, report, declaration, proclamation, pronouncement;
bulletin, communiqué, dispatch, message;
information, word, news;
advisory;
ukase;
pronunciamento;
ipse dixit;
rarerescript, asseveration
"an announcement by the Minister is expected this afternoon"
the action of making an announcement.
"the announcement of the decision of the European Parliament"
a notice appearing in a newspaper or public place and announcing something such as a birth, death, or marriage.
"an announcement is appearing in the Morning Post tomorrow"
synonyms: declaration, notification, report, reporting, publishing, broadcasting, proclamation, promulgation; More
disclosure, revelation, intimation, divulging;
archaicannunciation
"the announcement of the decision"
a piece of information given over a public address system.

Alternatively can Plusnet staff state what reason(s) their Announcement thread is actually for

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

LinnPlusnet — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 15:57:09 GMT

Hi TORPC,
I understand where you're coming from, however, it's worth explaining that our Twitter feed was automatically updated via the RSS feed. If you sign up for this then you should also be notified automatically in the future in situations like these. The Twitter feed wasn't manually updated.
We did update our Service Status as we have always done in these circumstances. This can be found here:
http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=2&?helpheader=servicestatus
The header is: Planned Website and Internal Systems Maintenance - Mon 7th Apr 11.00pm - Tue 8th Apr 6.00am
I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the feedback.

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

abstruse21 — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 16:05:47 GMT

Personally I would not want an email or whatever every-time an announcement is made about planned works etc. I -and I suspect some others - would plod along happily until I notice an outage and then check the status page and/or forum announcements before stamping my feet and sobbing into my keyboard (this generally only happens when i'm playing online games to be fair!). I definitely would not rely on a twitter feed as I no longer and probably never will use the thing again (same with facebook - godawful intrusive piece of rubbish - PERSONAL OPINION ONLY don't take offence :P). (while writing it was pointed out that the twitter is fed from the RSS feed.. Which I wont be signing up to either I get enough messages in my life as it is.
Maybe if I had planned to do some work from home in the small hours - like when I am dealing with companies in America, Australia or China and time zones make it easier to be at home than in an office - I would certainly take note of any announcements at that point of planned works to ensure a stress-free evening/night but again that is something I would go check for myself rather than wait for someone to warn me.
Agreed, it would be nice if whoever updates the twitter / RSS feed with something important like planned outages also copied that same info to announcements on the forum too of course (as that is what an announcement is). Copy + paste takes but seconds after-all.
But that's just me.. and others like to be fed the information as it comes in and do have the ability to choose to opt in to those messages which is the point of being able to sign up to it as opposed to it being forced upon them..

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

MauriceC — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 17:06:00 GMT

I'm not in favour of a personal email for planned outages either, like others I get enough in my mailbox to deal with anyway and I know where to look when circumstances demand that my Internet connectivity is critical.
Similarly I don't feel aggrieved that I am not kept fully aware of Rail; Airport; Road; TV ..............> planned maintenance.
NOTE: I believe it still to be true that the Service Status and the associated RSS feed are not Hosted on Plusnet main Server farm so that they will remain in service when such 'planned Maintenance' occurs.
M

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

drunkenmonkey — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 17:22:55 GMT

I agree with not having emails every time a service status was posted as well. I use the RSS feed but mostly get service status updates via twitter.

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

rongtw — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 17:28:50 GMT

would it not be a Idea to have a sticky Post on the forum , where the said Emails are placed for all to see
I dont do RSS feeds neither am i a tweeter and get enough emails as is without subscribing for more .
But i do frequent these forums , where if posted i would be more inclined to read them .
my 10 pence worth

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

TORPC — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 17:32:11 GMT

Quote from: Linn
Hi TORPC,
I understand where you're coming from, however, it's worth explaining that our Twitter feed was automatically updated via the RSS feed. If you sign up for this then you should also be notified automatically in the future in situations like these. The Twitter feed wasn't manually updated.
We did update our Service Status as we have always done in these circumstances. This can be found here:
http://www.plus.net/supportpages.html?a=2&?helpheader=servicestatus
The header is: Planned Website and Internal Systems Maintenance - Mon 7th Apr 11.00pm - Tue 8th Apr 6.00am
I'm sorry for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the feedback.

Cheer Lin
Now can you please explain (as I have asked & been overlooked (ignored)) the answer

Quote from: TORPC
To clarify
What I am saying is
If Twitter can be informed why can't the forums via their Announcement thread (That is what the Announcement thread is for (correct me if I am wrong)
Quote
announcement
əˈnaʊnsm(ə)nt/
noun
noun: announcement; plural noun: announcements
1.
a formal public statement about a fact, occurrence, or intention.
<snip>
a piece of information given over a public address system.

Alternatively can Plusnet staff state what reason(s) their Announcement thread is actually for

If you are not going to use you're own Announcement thread for the purpose it was intended for then remove it into the Archive section
As other have said
We DO NOT want to use Twitter/ RSS/ Facebook et al
Also I agree that a copy / Paste takes mere second(s) as opposed to minutes / hours wasted via the dogⁿbone / Ticket(s) et al

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

ejs — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 18:29:33 GMT

Looking at the broadband usage graphs, either the overnight BT work didn't affect many people and/or the people affected re-connected quickly enough for nothing to show on the number of users online graph.
If you really want to be pedantic about it, there isn't an Announcements thread - there's the Announcements board which contains various threads.

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

TORPC — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 18:41:31 GMT

@ejs
F.Y.I
There are plenty of your posts in relation to being pedantic, therefore you're the only one being pedantic
I do not wish to be pedantic over it as Board / Thread = Same Shelf (Named announcements) should be used for the purpose it was intended
However to be more accurate
The Board called Announcements should contain a Thread informing the forum members of the planned maintenance

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

PeterLoftus — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 18:51:17 GMT

If it ain't bust don't fix it
Go to the bottom of any community page and click service status what could be quicker also RSS feed or Twitter!
I don't want emails for areas or exchanges I'm not interested in

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

TORPC — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 19:01:48 GMT

No doubt if certain members made this thread, then clearly PN would put an announcement in the Announcements section
In respect of email(s)
They should only be sent out to those who have ticked the box to accept them
Or
For only those that will be affected by said maintenance
Still waiting for PN's answer at this time

Re: It would of been nice of PN to make an announcement for planned maintainence

Krazeh — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 19:31:45 GMT

Quote from: TORPC
The Board called Announcements should contain a Thread informing the forum members of the planned maintenance

Why should it? Because you say so? It's clear from even a cursory glance at the forum that it's not used to make people aware of planned maintenance to exchanges. There are systems that PN use to make people aware of such maintenance and you're free to make use of them. If you don't wish to do so then that's your prerogative but you will have to live with not being kept updated on planned maintenance.