Process for planned maintenance alerts
The Office of Information Technology has established the following process for communicating about planned maintenance or downtime for major IT services at Rutgers.
Initiating a planned maintenance alert
- Service owners should email alert request to the IT Communications team and the Help Desk at itcomm-alerts@oit.rutgers.edu.
- Planned maintenance alerts posted at the Rutgers IT website are intended for services affecting a significant segment of Rutgers students, faculty, and/or staff. They are not intended for local or minor planned maintenance.
Identifying major services affected by planned maintenance
- Before reaching out to the IT Communications team and the Help Desk about a planned maintenance alert request, it is critical for the service owner to identify a clear list of IT services that will be impacted.
- Services should be clearly described in a way that faculty, staff, and students can understand, regardless of their technical expertise.
Required planned maintenance alert request email details
When emailing itcomm-alerts@oit.rutgers.edu, include:
- List of affected IT services (e.g. ScarletMail, RUWireless, student financial aid system, VPN, etc.)
- Maintenance start and end dates/times
- Type of disruption or outage (e.g. full outage, intermittent access, etc.)
- Which user groups at Rutgers will be affected (faculty, staff, and/or students)
- Reasons for the maintenance and any benefits (e.g. new features available, enhancement for security, necessary upgrades to the system, etc.)
Alert development and posting
- Upon receiving the above details, the IT Communications team will draft the alert and work closely with the service owner to ensure the message is accurate.
- Once the alert text is approved, the IT Communications team or the Help Desk will post the alert on the Rutgers IT website prior to the scheduled maintenance.
Post-maintenance communication
- If the maintenance needs to be extended because of any issues, the IT Communications team and Help Desk should be notified so an update to the alert could be added.
- After the maintenance is completed, the service owner should email itcomm-alerts@oit.rutgers.edu to confirm that the maintenance was successfully carried out and that services have been restored.
Additional information on the overall process for alerts and outage communications is available as well.