service status page

[bilaliz]

Hi, Given some outages in the past, and today as well i'd suggest to put up a page on the main fpl website to announce the status of the service, that way if it does go out some times, people will at least know and not bang their heads in the wall .... like i just did today before i checked out the forums

[volenin]

+1

Also, suggest creating a 'service status distrib list' where the FPL would send the current issues with the service, even if they are isolated (eg, if some, but not all people complain about the interruptions in service). It's really quite simple: "Guys, we seem to be experiencing some problems, here is a brief description", "Guys, everything seems to be back up"...

May be this can be easily done through a single 'Service Status' thread on the 'Announcement' board, to which only authorized FPL staff can post the messages? This way anyone interested can simply subscribe to the thread and receive the notifications, while everyone else can just monitor the thread occasionally. Getting only FPL stuff post the message there would avoid overwhelming 'thread subscribers' with irrelevant messages.... On top of it, we (and any potential future customer) also be able to collect some stats on service reliability over a period of time. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea

[FONGO_steve]

I like the idea - even major providers like Bell Canada have a similar thing on their website to alert of issues, fix ETAs (if known), and areas affected.
I'll toss the idea by my superiors next week and see if it could be incorporated into the new website design when it gets finished.

[madroone]

agreed a status page would be great!!!!

[Yroc]

+ 1 for a status page.

I hate not knowing if the problem is on my end or yours.

[oscar666]

Yes, a status indicator on website + an optonal e-mail notice would be great !

[FONGO_kris]

Email is reasonable, remember guys we would need to have someone constantly checking the status of the service etc, develop a diagnostic test to show what areas are effected etc... It will take some time...

[Bennyguy]

Hi,
I would also like to suggest that in the user control panel on this form we have the availability to add what ATA modem we are using along with firmware, internet provider, etc. This data might allow mods, or admins and any of the seasoned members to potentially assist with the setup and any of the tech issues that arise.

So the turn around time for a working result would be quicker and it would save having to ask every time someone is having issues and maybe it would give the admins an idea of what setups are having more issues with.

Just an idea.

Regards,

Ken

[FONGO_kris]

I like that idea... Check out your UCP now

[Bennyguy]

Hi,
Cool thanks for updating the user control panel....I'm very new to the VOIP service so its a learning curve for sure, as it is for most here.

I would like to add to my suggestion.....I was wondering if you could move the equipment and ISP provider out in the open so it could be visible when reviewing the posts? (on the right hand side where the city, MSN and website links are located....there is lots of space for it.) I think more people would tend to add this info into their profile, so in turn it could be more beneficial to anyone trying to assist and or maybe if polls are added in the future it's a great way to collect user data to speed up the trouble shooting process.

Form polls can be a way for admins to collect various types of information from the users in a timely matter, with out having to sift through email messages for feed back. Some of the other forms that I'm on which are not related to voip, use this method to get input from the product users.

Regards,
Ken

[FONGO_steve]

How about this:

Having an actual service status webpage would be difficult to do because it would require someone always have access to our web server to update the page when problems occur - this would be tricky after-hours when we may only have one or two secondary support personal on hand.

What about twitter? We could have a twitter profile and integrate a twitter widget right into the website which would loop our updates - that way you don't need to physically go to the twitter site to see. Users could also follow us which means you could get updates via email, sms, however you like.

Just a proposed idea though - I still have to run it by many people before knowing if it could happen or not!

[volenin]

... Isn't your site dymanic? PHP / JSP /ASP based? It is trivial to create a simple GUI component that will display the status pulled from the DB or based on some type of other notification (eg, FPL support people send SMS / email to a predefined address and that message is displayed on the site)....

Twitter would work just as well... - some kind of feedback loop is really badly needed, with the 'PUSH' (ie, email distrib list), not 'PULL' (need to go to the website to see if anything changed in the status) notification.

Really liked the idea about collecting the info on the equipment. I'd add to the list though:

- Inet provider
- ATA / softphone specs
- location

And for each outage you can provide the stats on who is experiencing problems and where.

But it's all 'long term' plans. Short term (doable within < 1hour) - twitter OR 'service status' forum topic with restricted access will work... Can you make submissions to the forum through the email? If not, then TWITTER is probably the easiest answer - all publish/subscribe models already implemented on a variety of platforms (SMS, email, etc).

Kris/Steve, can you create TWITTER account for this purpose and let us know the name, so that anyone interested can subscribe? (that would be the most useful application of TWITTER I've seen up to date).

[bilaliz]

i dont think you need a person to update a service status page, output from a service like http://www.websitepulse.com or similar could easily be placed in a static page and it updates whenever there is a change, you just need to get the service to monitor your systems for you and thats really easy and about $25 a month or so, there are other similar services available... shop around ..

tweeter is not a bad idea, but i means i will have to join yet one more website ... yes no tweeting so far

last time i was told i cant name a service but put a link .. thats what i have tried to do this time .. i hope this one's alright