Keeping users informed of during major incidents

[Redrocker]

Hi all, just found this forum, so this is my first post. I work in Incident managment and we are looking for new ways to keep our users updated on the progress of major incidents.

We currently text to stake holders at the start and end of an incident, have messages we can put on the service desk number, email and have recently started messaging through citrix to users.

Does anyone have any other suggestions we could incorporate to reach a wider audience? We are a central service desk that supports a wide number of small remote sites.

cheers

Rob

[UKVIKING]

Rob,

The issue is TLI or TMI to the users
If you tell them about every outage - even out of hours that happen as a matter of course,.... will they think the service is unreliable

If you have the ability to post to a website / social web... but then.. what if that service is the one that is down

There is no easy answer

Ask the stakeholders is my next suggestion
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[Redrocker]

Thanks John.

I think it is a matter of striking the balance between keeping the users informed and information overload to the point they think as you say the service is unreliable.

[Nuno]

Hi,

I agreed with John:
"Ask the stakeholders is my next suggestion"

In our case we use Remedy workflow to notify the users when there is incident status changes.

Regards

[Hensome]

Hi Rob,

Just want to share with you the practices which we are running for major incident management.

1. Service Desk sends out the email notification to all the affected parties upon the detection of major incident.
2. The major incident manager sends out another email notification/update with more details (e.g. potential cause, which party is working on the issue, the resolution progress, any workaround identified, potential emergency change, etc.) to the stakeholders.
3. The other support team (e.g. application team, infrastructure team) who owns the incident ticket keeps updating the stakeholders by replying incident manager's email.
4. Upon resolution, the supporting team notifies the stakeholders with the actions taken to resolve the issue, workarounds applied, potential root cause, any improvement plan if applicable.
5. The incident ticket is resolved and Service Desk sends notification to all the affected parties.

Hope this helps. And please feel free to comment.

Cheers,
Henry Chang