New Supplier Fault and Maintenance page

Hi all,

I've seen posts in the past about us lacking information on some BT outages and maintenance, so I thought I'd let you all know we've revamped our Broadband Supplier Fault/Maintenance page (so outage and maintenance from BT) page.

The new page can be found here:

Broadband Supplier Fault and Maintenance Alerts

This now includes data supplied to us from BT for both 20CN and 21CN (the previous version only showed 20CN). It's also a lot cleaner and provides more information - though sometimes that may be on the 'techy' side, as it's exactly what we're provided with. Never-the-less it should give a good overview of identified faults and upcoming maintenance.

regards,
Phil.

Very nice Phil.

It's also good to see that you can go into a PEW reference and see exactly what work is being carried out (e.g. I see BT are doing a lot of ATM line card changes at the moment). I'm guessing there maybe some blanks depending on what BT tell you.

Previously the only other ISP I could find which gave this kind of info was A&A.

Phil,

My only criticism would be the "Past Faults and Maintenance" section. It seems rather jumbled with the faults and maintenance mixed in together. Prehaps list the faults first and then the maintenance?

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for the feedback.

Our thinking in terms of putting them in the same place/list is that customers are likely more interested in when something affected them, rather than the specifics of what it was/is.

It's something for us to keep in mind though, and see if other customers give us similar feedback too.

ta,
Phil.

In reply to a post by SkyFire:

Hi all,

I've seen posts in the past about us lacking information on some BT outages and maintenance, so I thought I'd let you all know we've revamped our Broadband Supplier Fault/Maintenance page (so outage and maintenance from BT) page.

The new page can be found here:

Broadband Supplier Fault and Maintenance Alerts

Phil - Thank you!

One thing though - where BT publish exhange names for pew's and outages can that be shown in the listings as well. A string of phone numbers is great if you don't care much or understand exchange names, but its a bit useless in the real world where numbers are not split into even blocks etc.

Also any chance of a search box for a given MSO or PEW ref number?

Any chance of an RSS feed, or the option to get email alerts for specific customer lines.

And lastly - any chance of tying this in with the user portal so that people will see notices against there lines/.services from there without digging through a big list - it might save you some user queries.

I'm glad to see the folks of Zen land listen to customers and partners.

All we need now is a way to alert your 24hr NOC staff about significant outages (Like the BGP blip a couple of weeks ago) It's fine to post something on here and hope it's picked up on. I'm just thinking something like a twitter/email/IM/SMS way in for out of hours faults.

In reply to a post by IamQ:

Phil - Thank you!

You're welcome.

In reply to a post by IamQ:

One thing though - where BT publish exhange names for pew's and outages can that be shown in the listings as well. A string of phone numbers is great if you don't care much or understand exchange names, but its a bit useless in the real world where numbers are not split into even blocks etc.

I'm not following you here unfortunately - can you explain how this would help please?

In reply to a post by IamQ:

Also any chance of a search box for a given MSO or PEW ref number?

It's possible, but I can't see a general use for this - the vast majority of users will work based on their telephone number; especially as the only way to see the reference is to visit this page (or the equivelant at other ISPs). I guess it might be helpful for large 'general' outages where area codes aren't provided; it's very much a limited mileage feature though?

In reply to a post by IamQ:

Any chance of an RSS feed, or the option to get email alerts for specific customer lines.

There are two RSS feeds for faults and maintenance there. (click your browser's 'RSS' indicator thingy). The RSS feeds are also listed here:

Zen RSS Feeds

We're thinking about how to indicate things specific to particular lines and...

In reply to a post by IamQ:

And lastly - any chance of tying this in with the user portal so that people will see notices against there lines/.services from there without digging through a big list - it might save you some user queries.

... is probably the way to do that. A RAG (Red/Amber/Green) indicator in the Portal linking to the particular notice(s). Can't guarantee we'll do it - but it's on my wish list.

In reply to a post by IamQ:

I'm glad to see the folks of Zen land listen to customers and partners.

And I'm pleased to see the effort's appreciated.

In reply to a post by IamQ:

All we need now is a way to alert your 24hr NOC staff about significant outages (Like the BGP blip a couple of weeks ago) It's fine to post something on here and hope it's picked up on. I'm just thinking something like a twitter/email/IM/SMS way in for out of hours faults.

It isn't relevant for the "BGP blip" (so you might decide to class the following as 'irrelevant' ) but as part of the work we've done that's brought you the improved supplier fault/maintenance page we're also working on some "behind the scenes" tools to provide us an 'early warning' of major BT outages prior to BT identifying it; this is helping us respond better to these events.
At the moment it is very manual however - as we're experimenting prior to putting some automation around it (basically making sure we're not responding to 'normal' activity as though it's a fault). Once it's finalised though that should help with BT-based issues of varying severity 24/7.

I do get what you're saying here though - sometimes there are issues that end users may spot before we do, and out-of-hours it's currently not really possible to communicate that to us. Certainly something to think about.

Right - I've got some Excel 'fun' to get back to.

Thanks for your feedback - much appreciated.

ta,
Phil.

Advance warning - I suspect I've broken the formatting in the message some what...

One thing though - where BT publish exhange names for pew's and outages can that be shown in the listings as well. A string of phone numbers is great if you don't care much or understand exchange names, but its a bit useless in the real world where numbers are not split into even blocks etc.

I'm not following you here unfortunately - can you explain how this would help please?

My thinking is that I (for 1) go by exchange name and not line number. I know for example that I have lines in LNENF, LNPON, & WRSTHBK there for work against those exchanges will flag with me something is likley to happen. A long list of numbers means I need to look through what numbers are linked to which exchances which is more work.

You also know based on exchange or node what other areas might get taken out as a result of any PEW's etc. (Birmingham, Slough and Paddington) all being good examples of incidents and works that's taken out more than the 'directley connected lines' at those sites.

I do aggree that 80%+ of people may have no idea what exchange there connected to at all.

Also any chance of a search box for a given MSO or PEW ref number?

It's possible, but I can't see a general use for this - the vast majority of users will work based on their telephone number; especially as the only way to see the reference is to visit this page (or the equivelant at other ISPs). I guess it might be helpful for large 'general' outages where area codes aren't provided; it's very much a limited mileage feature though?

Granted - though I do get emails with just with a list of PEW's of interest which can be a pain to look up. I'll aggree with you on the limited use in normal situations.

Any chance of an RSS feed, or the option to get email alerts for specific customer lines.

There are two RSS feeds for faults and maintenance there. (click your browser's 'RSS' indicator thingy). The RSS feeds are also listed here:

Zen RSS Feeds

We're thinking about how to indicate things specific to particular lines and...

Firefox was made of fail and wouldn't give me the subscribe link. Now I know its there I'll have a play about with it as that info get published to Cisco IP phones via services (Which is a nice touch)

And lastly - any chance of tying this in with the user portal so that people will see notices against there lines/.services from there without digging through a big list - it might save you some user queries.

... is probably the way to do that. A RAG (Red/Amber/Green) indicator in the Portal linking to the particular notice(s). Can't guarantee we'll do it - but it's on my wish list.

Ok that would work - and it keeps things easy for people.

In reply to a post by IamQ:

I'm glad to see the folks of Zen land listen to customers and partners.

And I'm pleased to see the effort's appreciated.

Oh it is - its always good when a supplier engages with there customers

In reply to a post by IamQ:

All we need now is a way to alert your 24hr NOC staff about significant outages (Like the BGP blip a couple of weeks ago) It's fine to post something on here and hope it's picked up on. I'm just thinking something like a twitter/email/IM/SMS way in for out of hours faults.

It isn't relevant for the "BGP blip" (so you might decide to class the following as 'irrelevant' ) but as part of the work we've done that's brought you the improved supplier fault/maintenance page we're also working on some "behind the scenes" tools to provide us an 'early warning' of major BT outages prior to BT identifying it; this is helping us respond better to these events.
At the moment it is very manual however - as we're experimenting prior to putting some automation around it (basically making sure we're not responding to 'normal' activity as though it's a fault). Once it's finalised though that should help with BT-based issues of varying severity 24/7.

I do get what you're saying here though - sometimes there are issues that end users may spot before we do, and out-of-hours it's currently not really possible to communicate that to us. Certainly something to think about.

Indeed - I'd say it don't even need to be anything 'formal' a thread on the official Zen forum or something where the folk of NMC/NOC land can pick up on something.

Yes if BT decide to drop 10,000 customers of an MSIL I'm sure you would notice! BT issues (I'm guessing) account for most blips and outages.

Right - I've got some Excel 'fun' to get back to.

Thanks for your feedback - much appreciated.

ta,
Phil.