It all started when we sent out an email notification a few days ago, informing our users clearly and as simply as we dare, that our company's website and intranet would be down for half an hour, as some updates were being applied to the homepage. No other services would be affected.
Of course what the users read was: "We are turning every server off for the rest of the day, so that none of our computer services will be available. Once back on every problem you get will be related to this issue."
It makes us wonder why we bother to communicate with our users at all, as they clearly ignore our warnings.
Within moments of the email entering cyberspace, we had multiple questions, queries and complaints from various users:
"You can't do that; I am teaching and will need to have access to my files."
"Will I still be able to get my emails?"
"We are running online exams, you can't turn off the internet."
"Will eBay still work?"
and so it went on... My personal favourite being: "Will this fix the problem of my PC going into hibernation mode every few minutes?"
The day of the operation dawns and all is quiet. It's a simple file copy, one that should only take a few minutes. We turn off the website to prevent use, copy over the new files and re-enable it. A few tweaks later and a nice, new shiny homepage is in place. Mission completed successfully, it's taken ten minutes out of the allotted half an hour and we doubt anyone has even noticed. Except for the one person who didn't even bother opening the email we sent and rang us up for a good old fashioned rant. The site was probably back up before they had finished and hung up.
But...
The site has been back up for almost an hour and the phone calls begin. For some reason because we have updated the company's homepage, the downtime earlier is now responsible for every IT related issue that occurs.
A lady cannot get on to the internet because we have changed the homepage: Actually she had become disconnected from the wireless.
A homearea has not mapped on a users computer: A completely unrelated issue with a completely different server.
We have reports of password problems on mobile devices.
And of course the user upstairs is still trying to figure out how to fill the paper tray.
Why oh why don't these people read their emails and digest the information before jumping to conclusions? We clearly stated that the ONLY affected resource would be the website itself and the intranet. Instead of laying blame on routine (successful) maintenance, try implying some simple logic that would help us to diagnose the faults and fix them in a shorter time frame. Everyone's a winner.
Everytime it is the same old story: Because we upgraded a piece of software a week ago, they hit the panic button and automatically blame us for all upcoming issues with unrelated services, until the next insignificant change enables them to moan about something else.
With so much running from our network, 100% uptime is not only an unreasonable request, but almost virtually impossible. There is always something that needs doing. Putting these off, only makes them pile up. Besides, if we didn't perform these changes the users would moan things were out of date.
We are damned if we do and damned if we don't.
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