Bad News Messages: How Much and How Often? Carlyn Chatfield Manager, IT Technical Communications August 14, 2009 Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Major Service: Hardware Failure on 1 of 3 Servers (i.e. Email) Whom to tell? Only those affected Everyone, in case someone unaffected is waiting for the affected person to respond How much, how often? If scheduled, twice: 48 hours and 24 hours in advance If unscheduled, voicemail broadcast once, refer to web site for future updates Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Major Service: Hardware Failure on only Server (i.e. Mailman) Whom to tell? Everyone How much, how often? If scheduled, 1 week then 48 and 24 hours in advance If unscheduled, immediately (tricky when all the mailing lists are down!) and every 4 hours until restored Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Campus-wide Storage: Dept-shared directories down Whom to tell? Department representatives Everyone How much, how often? If scheduled, 48 and 24 hours in advance If unscheduled, immediately and every 4 hours until restored Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

University web site: 4 hours of Scheduled Maintenance Whom to tell? Everyone Maybe publish warning on home page How much, how often? If scheduled, in advance 3 weeks then 1 week then 48 and 24 hours in advance If unscheduled, tell everyone immediately Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Communications Problem: High Maintenance Time Frame Summer days and other off-peak academic time windows = high amount of IT maintenance work Too many messages diluting channel effectiveness Solution: one weekly update to all Supplement with IT-Alerts (subscribed list) Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Channels: push or pull messages? Web site: only seen if someone checks Voicemail broadcast: good for emergency IT messages, but only for employees since most students use personal cell phones Mailing lists: good unless email is down Limit use or your messages will be ignored Manual email list: good for IT emergencies Blog: good for extended outages Update every 1-2 hours for the folks who want to know the details Systems status page: good if can be fed automatically Text: best way to get brief message to staff in field Twitter: good if you’ve trained your audience to use it Facebook: not good for bad messages unless… Future work web page: good for scheduled maintenance Login pages for systems affected: good for scheduled maintenance Weekly update: new for summer 2009, good for multiple scheduled outages Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

Rice’s IT Communications Channels Web site (new, launched 8/12/09) Voicemail broadcast: used rarely, prefer other channels Mailing lists: subscribe to IT-Alerts, RSS for IT-Alerts Manual email list: Excel, managed by Carlyn IT Extended Outage Blog Systems status page Text: Private to IT staff with emergency contact info in Rice’s data base; IT-headsup is a subset of Rice’s MIR3 tool for crisis communications Twitter: RiceITweets (new services, reminders, not bad news) Facebook: Joe ITguy, a summer fling for in-coming students, not utilized much in school year; rarely for outages Metrics (planned outages, maintenance) Login pages (add notes when apps affected): OWL-Space (course management), webmail, webcal Weekly update (email contained only summary with link to web page for details) Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.

What’s next? More on mobiles Audio from Emergency phone poles Others? Cell phones as primary communication channel for all messages Audio from Emergency phone poles Campus emergencies, brief message broadcast (outside only, probably not used for IT messages) Others? Copyright Carlyn Foshee Chatfield, 2009. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for the material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided this copyright statement appears in the reproduced materials and notice is given to the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author.