Newsgator Forums / NewsGator Online / NewsGator Online Support and Requests / Newsgator needs a server status page / Latest Posts

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Dan MacTough — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:04:39 GMT

That's much better, Keith. Thanks.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Kevin Yank — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:48:14 GMT

Thankyou!

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Keith Franklin — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:21:50 GMT

You'll find duplicate announcements [url=http://blogs.newsgator.com/support/]here[/url] in the future.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Kevin Yank — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:07:17 GMT

[quote][b]Keith Franklin (5/15/2008)[/b][hr]Honestly, it doesn't matter where the post is. None of the feeds indexed by our servers was receiving updates during the outage. I posted here in the forums as soon as I found out about the problem. It would have been at the same time, no matter where the post appeared.[/quote]

I strongly disagree with your reasoning. People rely on your services (e.g. I use them to monitor an error feed generated by our own web application), and as such there is a need for a low-noise channel to notify your users of outages (both planned and unplanned). This forum is [i]not[/i] suitable—it is very high noise, and the vast majority of your users do not have time to actively monitor it.

A dedicated (and, ideally, semi-automated) feed for service interruption notices would enable users to find out as soon as you do—not as soon as they notice something is wrong, waste time diagnosing possible problems within their own systems and within the originating feed(s), and then finally trawling this noisy forum for answers.

Obviously, it wouldn’t make sense to subscribe to such a feed via NewsGator’s own feed delivery services. I would subscribe to it directly, or use a 3rd party service to receive posts to that feed as email or even SMS notifications.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Keith Franklin — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:54:10 GMT

Honestly, it doesn't matter where the post is. None of the feeds indexed by our servers was receiving updates during the outage. I posted here in the forums as soon as I found out about the problem. It would have been at the same time, no matter where the post appeared.

The real issue here is that this outage went unnoticed for an extended period of time. We have an elaborate monitoring system in place to make us aware of problems like this and this one got by us. Fortunately we have identified the fail point and have added additional monitoring tools to prevent this type of thing from happening in the future.

We are thoroughly embarrassed by this and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Kevin Yank — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:14:06 GMT

I agree with Dan. You can’t honestly expect your users to monitor every post in your user-to-user support forum in order to stay informed about service outages. That you would propose such a solution given the business your company is in is deeply disturbing.

Back in 2006, Jack Brewster [url=http://forum.newsgator.com/Topic22907-22-1.aspx]announced[/url] that the NewsGator tech support blog would be used to post service status notices. If a detailed service status page (here’s a [url=http://status.aws.amazon.com/]nice example[/url]) is beyond what NewsGator is able to deliver, then at least posting to the blog as per Jack’s announcement would be helpful.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Dan MacTough — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:50:48 GMT

Keith, thanks for the update. I must point out, however, that subscribing to a feed would not have been helpful during today's outage, since feeds weren't updating. And without that feed you recommended, as helpful as the forums can be, hunting through the various threads is tedious, at best. And only the few people who read THIS THREAD are going to know your thoughts about the best way a customer can keep himself informed about the status of the next outage.

Not to mention that there was no status update of any kind for many hours. Whatever means NG chooses to update its customers -- be it a forum, a server status page, Twitter, whatever -- you have to give timely status updates to be of any use.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Keith Franklin — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:06:37 GMT

All drama aside, we appreciate your input. Your constructive comments help us to isolate and resolve issues as they arise. The job of communicating to customers falls squarely on my shoulders. If there has been any lack of communication on my part, I apologize for that.

The forums are the first place you can expect a response to ongoing problems. I recommend subscribing to [url=http://www.newsgator.com/forumrss.aspx]this feed[/url]: http://www.newsgator.com/forumrss.aspx

That feed pulls in posts from all of the forums. Our public responses will appear right in the discussion itself, so it can be in any of the forum categories. We also have an [url=http://forum.newsgator.com/RssFeed22-0-0-1.aspx]Announcements forum[/url], but that isn't likely to be updated until after the incident has been resolved. I typically reserve communication there until all of the facts are in.

Again, we appreciate your patience as we work through these growing pains.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Kevin Yank — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:17:48 GMT

Alas.

With today’s outage, history repeats, and users have nothing but broken promises like the above to cling to.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Ronnie Gilbertson — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:32:46 GMT

This was an item on our to do list, but thanks to your posts I was able to get this as a high priority. We will be putting a process together and I will be updating here soon.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

marshallkirkpatrick — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:09:40 GMT

I too would like to know at the very least where to look for the most timely information about server/service problems. I recommend Newsgator to all my clients and I look bad when it doesn't work and I can't tell them why. Do I look on the blog, or in the forums or both? I know I've complained about this before, but I think this is a widespread problem for web 2.0 service/app companies and I'd like to see the cluetrain factor maximized in any solution. I closely monitor the rss feeds of my service providers' blogs and would like to hear about problems from them before I hear about it from my clients.
Thanks.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Kevin Yank — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:59:31 GMT

I appreciate your apology; however, my requests still stand.

RE: Newsgator needs a server status page

Ronnie Gilbertson — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:42:53 GMT

Kevin,

We are continually working on ways to improve our services and value your input. We have since Identified and resolved the problem that you reported. We had a unique situation occur on our systems and are in the process of enhancing our monitoring and reporting to account for this. Again, I apologize for the delay in service that resulting in some content not returning in a timely matter and I hope that you find our services reliable and consistent outside of this exception.

Ronnie

Newsgator needs a server status page

Kevin Yank — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 08:28:30 GMT

Outages like the one that affected NewsGator Online today are unacceptable in and of themselves, but even moreso when paying customers have no way to determine the issue's severity, scope, and expected time to resolution.

NewsGator, like most serious online service providers, should have a page on its support site to update its users of the status of outages, both planned and unplanned.

NewsGator should also publish minimum service level commitments (e.g. 99% monthly uptime) and announce a compensation scheme when those commitments are not met (e.g. Business-level subscribers receive a 1 month service credit or equivalent refund).