Services

A service is a tool people rely on every day: mail, the VPN, the intranet, the phones, a website. Each one shows a state on the page, and the events that name it.

Editors and administrators manage services from the Services page. Readers and visitors see them on the dashboard, where a service opens in a side panel with its state, its last 30 days and its latest events.

Create a service

New, then Service, on the Services page, opens the form:

Create the service adds it at the end of the list, in the state Operational. Administrators can also add services during the first launch.

To change a service later, open it by its name or by its pencil on the Services page, then Save. Its state is not in the form: it is set from the list.

Icons

• 24 built-in icons, from Server to Printing.
• Upload an icon, in the head of the Your icons card on the icon library page: PNG, JPG, WebP or SVG, up to 256 KB. Images larger than 128 pixels are reduced; an SVG is cleaned of anything that could run or load something.
• Uploaded icons form one library, shared by services, events and templates, reached by Manage your icons in a service’s icon choice. An icon still in use cannot be deleted.

Visibility

Each service says who sees it, in its form and in the panel of a folder:

When the page is for members only, the choice is All members or Restricted.

With Restricted, Add opens a search over the groups, with their number of members, and over the readers, by name for editors and with their address for administrators; each one shows as a tag, with Remove. Past five tags, the list ends with “and 2 more”. A line says who will see the service, such as “Visible to 3 members, plus editors and administrators.” A restricted service needs at least one group or member.

Editors and administrators always see every service. For the others:

• Incidents, maintenance and announcements follow their services: an event is seen by anyone who sees one of the services it names, and shows only those. An announcement that names no service is for everyone.
• A service someone may not see leaves no trace for them: not on the dashboard or the banner, not in the events, the search or the filters, and a direct link answers “not found”. When a visitor sees no service at all, the banner says “No visible service”.
• The Atom feed always shows what a visitor without an account sees.
• The text of an event (its title, description, updates and report) is shown as written to everyone who sees the event: name a restricted service there only when they may know about it.

Folders

A folder groups services, such as Network or Lyon office, on one level: a folder holds no folder, and a service sits in one folder at most. On the dashboard, each folder is a title over its services, after the services in no folder; a reader sees a folder’s title only when they see one of its services.

On the Services page, each folder is a card with its name, its number of services and Manage folder; the services in no folder come first, in a card without a title.

Create a folder

New, then Folder, at the top of the Services page, then a Folder name of up to 100 characters, unique, and Create the folder. The folder’s page opens.

A folder’s page

• “Restricted, Accounting”, at the right of its name, with Change, opens its Folder name and its visibility, the same setting as a service’s, then Save.
• Add services lists the services not in this folder, with a search past eight; tick them, then Add. A service in another folder moves here.
• Remove, on a service’s row, takes it out of the folder.

Inherited visibility

A service in a folder inherits the folder’s visibility by default: its form shows Inherit from folder “Accounting”, ticked, with the folder’s setting. Changing the folder’s visibility changes all the services that inherit it. Unticking the box keeps the setting as a starting point for the service’s own.

Folders never open a service by mistake:

• A service added to a folder inherits from it when it was Public, or already had the folder’s visibility. Any other keeps its own, and the folder’s page lists it under Own visibility. The message after adding says which, such as “3 services added. 2 inherit the folder’s visibility, 1 keeps its own.”
• A service taken out of a folder, or left by a deleted folder, keeps the visibility it had.

Delete a folder

Delete the folder, at the foot of its page, with Delete to confirm. Its services stay, in no folder, with the visibility they had.

States

Set a state by hand

On the Services page, each service has a state menu. A choice is published at once, with Undo beside it. Outage first asks “Publish status “Outage”?”, then Publish.

When a state changes on its own

An incident sets the state of the services it names while it is Investigating or Fixing. A maintenance does so while it is Under way. Announcements never do. See Incidents and Maintenance.

When several things apply, the service shows the most serious: Outage, then Degraded, then Under maintenance, then Operational. A maintenance under way does not hide a detected outage, and a state set by hand to Outage stays during a minor incident.

When the incident moves to Monitoring, is resolved or cancelled, or the maintenance ends, the service goes back to the most serious of what is left, which is usually the state set by hand.

While an event or a detected outage holds a service, its menu gives way to the state shown, with a link to that event, or Detected automatically and Declare an incident. The menu comes back when it ends.

Order

Arrange puts an up and a down arrow on each service, which moves it within its card, and on each folder, which moves the folder among the others. The order is saved a moment after the last move, and applies wherever services are listed, the dashboard included. Done or Escape leaves the mode.

In the same mode, Show disrupted services first lists every service that is not Operational before the others, each group in the chosen order. It is off by default.

Availability history

Each service has one bar per day, in the instance’s time zone, ending today. The dashboard and the Services page show 90 days where there is room and the last 30 on a narrow screen; the side panel always shows 30.

• The most serious incident of the day wins. An incident counts from its start until it moves to Monitoring, or until it ends; a cancelled incident never counts.
• Maintenance never colours a day.
• A detected outage colours a day only when no incident covers it, and only when it lasts fifteen minutes or more in total.

There is no percentage: the caption counts the days with an incident.

Delete a service

A service that no event ever named can be deleted from its form, under Delete the service. It leaves without a trace, its detected outages included.

A service that events name is kept, so their history stays whole. To stop showing it on the dashboard, an administrator leaves it out in Arrange on the dashboard: see Settings. A service left out comes back as soon as it is not Operational.

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