Advance notification of maintenance window
Published Dec 02 2020 08:41 AM 4,763 Views
Community Manager

I wanted to take a moment to let you all know that Microsoft Tech Community has regular maintenance windows on Wednesdays and Fridays between midnight and 4am Pacific.  

 

While we always try to ensure that our maintenance periods do not affect your ability to use the community, occasionally we must display our maintenance page. When this is necessary it may not always be possible to let you know in advance, but we will work to restore service as quickly as we can. 

 

On December 4th, between midnight and 4am PT (7am – 11am UTC), we will be making some changes to the Microsoft Tech Community which will require period of complete downtime. This should not last longer than 2 hours and anyone visiting the site during this time will get our usual Maintenance page. 

 

On behalf of the Microsoft Tech Community, I would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and do check back on Friday for an update on this maintenance period.  

 

Allen Smith

Technical Lead

Microsoft Tech Community

23 Comments

Hi @Allen wish you and your Team lot of success with the Maintenance on the Microsoft Tech Community Platform :smile:

Cheers, James

Thanks for the heads up!

Community Manager

Thanks @HotCakeX @James van den Berg 

 

so maintenance is now complete. We are running some post deployment tests but they shouldn’t affect your ability to access the site.

 

I will share a post later today telling you more about some exciting changes we made today.

 

Allen

@Allen sounds good, excited to find out about them :)

by the way, was this maintenance for moving to Azure?

Silver Contributor

@Allen I'm excited, too!

Silver Contributor

@Allen, it's already 2:03 PM PST, you said you would share the post later today, where can I find it? I assume that it's not released.

@Kam Not everyone lives in the same place as you. people have different time zones.

Silver Contributor

@HotCakeX I know. That's why I mentioned PST instead of EST, where I live.

@Kam has nothing to do with them. like I said people have different time zones. PST and EST are only 2. there are a lot more. i just give you this link to learn more about time zones.

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/

 

anyways, today or tomorrow doesn't really matter, nothing was promised to us.

Community Manager

@Kam @HotCakeX 

 

The post has been put on hold for now, sorry for the let down.

 

I will update this post when it's been published.

 

FYI I am technically in GMT (Scotland) but I spend my working life in PST because that's where most of my colleagues are based. I am wondering if I should start telling the time in star dates.. what do you think? a reasonable solution?

 

Allen

It's alright, thanks, that's remote working on a whole new level!

 

I think it's just small details. saying "soon" would stop others from asking: "when?, today?, tomorrow? is it out yet? when is it coming out?, come out already!, etc." lol

 

I guess very few people seen this post in advance and found it only after maintenance page gone, trying to find an answer on "what the heck happened?"

Oh yeah that's also good to point out, I think a countdown timer at the top of the MTC website to show when the maintenance will happen (regardless of the time zone) would be more useful. everyone would see the remaining time, no need to convert anything.

Community Manager

lol @HotCakeX I love the enthusiasm!

 

the fact is many of our maintenance windows go by and no one even knows they have happened.

 

The site is setup in such a way that the vast majority of maintenance can be done one node at a time.

 

We do normally air on the side of caution with words like soon or in due course but in my attempt to be completely open with everyone I probably over communicated.

 

I will share and update in due course though.

 

Allen

 

Yes, exactly, in the past year I think I only noticed maintenance alert message 2 or 3 times.

 

thanks, looking forward to that

 

From time to time I have maintenance alert from my power or internet provider like "Hey, we will do maintenance from 8am to 12pm and it it will be break of services". So, I planned to do nothing at that time, but one one day I missed such alert and in reality breaks were couple of times on max couple of minutes each. Which is practically nothing for me. Now I ignore such alerts and do my activities as usual, just take cup of coffee and smoke during such break. What I do from time to time in any case. That's more about the communications, not about real work. Without such alerts I'm angry, with them I'm patient, but that's practically doesn't affect my activities.

Silver Contributor

The notification bell is back, everyone!

Silver Contributor

@Allen  I wanted to point out a bug that needs to be fixed and I already told you.

 

Kam_0-1612140492486.png

 

 

If there are 0 posts (in this case, 0 Articles) it shouldn't say "Updated 12-31-1969" but it should say "Never Updated."

 

I will post this in the Ideas section too. Is it fine? I am not sure because this is a tip/idea on how fix a bug.

Yeah saw it few days ago, it's good

Community Manager

@Kam 

 

or possibly even just not show a last updated date. I hear 1969 was a good year though, sure you don't want to travel through time and revisit it?

 

No??

 

Ok well then I guess we better look at this and see what we can do to fix it :smiling_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Silver Contributor

@Allen LOL There was no Microsoft in 1969 :xd: but maybe you should input 1-1-1979, that would be good too (if you want to time travel) but if I consider your idea, and then look at my previous post, there are no posts to time travel with! xD maybe it should change the browser to IE even though there was no IE in 1979 :lol: :smile:

Community Manager

@Kam 

The internet as it was in 1979 (well this story was 1981).

Silver Contributor

@Allen I am not sure if you understood me but IE meant Internet Explorer.

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