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Planned Service Maintenance Communication

The respective business owner and service owner are responsible for managing the relationship with clients using their service, and they make the final decision regarding the need for client communications. The UIT Communications team can assist with any communications planning and implementation as needed. You can reach the team by submitting a help request at uitcomm.stanford.edu.

The following are some questions to consider when determining if client communication is needed for service maintenance during the standard service maintenance windows.

Before you begin

  • Have you filed a Change Request (CR)?
    • Yes: Continue to the “Is client communication needed?” section.
    • No: Advanced communication planning is always recommended, and there will be times when you should consider communication before submitting a CR. Note, however, that a CR should typically be in place and approved at a Change Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to ensure there are no approval concerns before sending client communications. Continue to the “Is client communication needed?” section.

Is client communication needed?

  1. Do clients need to take action to enable, or as a result of, the service maintenance?
    1. Yes: This will likely require communications, giving clients notice of the action they will need to perform and when they will need to perform it. That may include pre-event notifications, reminder(s), and a post-event reminder. That said, there may be cases where clients already know they may need to take action following maintenance to a service, and communication is not required.
  2. Do you expect that there will be a service interruption?
    1. Yes, maintenance happens during a standard service maintenance window. A “Planned Outage” should be created on the Change Request, reflecting the outage period. The outage may not necessarily require additional communication.
    2. Yes (or maybe), maintenance happens outside the standard service window. In addition to creating a "Planned Outage" on the Change Request, the visibility or impact of the outage may warrant advanced notice to clients.
  3. Will clients notice changes to the service after the outage?
    1. Yes: When a service looks or behaves differently after maintenance, it's UIT's best practice to provide clients advance notice of that change and how it might affect their use of the service.

Reaching clients

The following are questions the UIT Communications team, business owner, service owner, or other UIT staff should consider when planning client communications.

  1. Who is responsible for communicating with the clients of the service?
    1. Is there a non-UIT business owner for the service?
      1. Some services have business owners outside of UIT (e.g., FMS for Oracle Financials, UHR, and Registrar’s Office for Axess). Sometimes, these business owners take direct responsibility for communicating with the service’s clients. The UIT representative should work directly with that business owner to determine the proper method of communication. If UIT is responsible for communications, a UIT communication representative can work with the business owner to ensure communications are aligned.
    2. UIT
      1. Who is the UIT service owner and/or key internal stakeholders?
  2. Can UIT Communications support the communications?
    1. Again, the UIT Communications team (uitcomm.stanford.edu) can assist with any communication planning and implementation as needed. (Communication priorities may impact resource availability.) 
      You can:
      1. Draft the communication yourself and share it with the UIT Communications team for editorial support or
      2. Contact UIT Communications for draft support.
    2. Answers to the following sample questions can help UIT Communications support your client communications. UIT Communications will likely have additional questions during a consultation, but these will help with preparation.
      1. How many clients use the service? Will they be affected?
      2. Who are the clients? Can they be individually identified (e.g., people who are using Stanford's Duo authentication), or are they a broad client audience (e.g., people who provide and use Stanford websites)? Are there clients using other services that rely on this service and might be affected?
      3. Can you produce a list of email addresses for individual users?
      4. Can we communicate the change within the application/tool/website - via banner, notice, link, etc.?
      5. Can we leverage a Communities of Practice (COP) and/or affinity groups to help cascade messages or even gain information?
      6. Will broad distribution channels (e.g., UIT Newsletter, Stanford Report, broad/general email lists) be needed?
      7. How often/with what frequency do we need to communicate about the planned maintenance work and its impact on clients (e.g., before, during, after)?
      8. Should IT leadership (e.g., CIO Council) get advance notice?
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