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Hub You - The Fallacy of Zero Downtime Upgrades (And What Every Manager Should Do About It)
My previous two articles “What is RSS and Why use RSS” focused on how we can give our customers a better online experience while lessening the hassles for the online marketer. In this article I’m going to offer you another way to look at RSS – from the standpoint of a new emerging profession: the channelmaster or newsmaster as Robin Good calls it. These are going to be the “Who’s Who” of RSS in the coming months and years. I remember when email was the new thing for the average person; everyone was excited about the “new” technology. It had been around for awhile in the tech world bu
You are looking for help. Did you want to. . .
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Disambiguation pages can help users adapt to the new look and feel of your software. Once you embrace the concept of disambiguation pages, you realize they empower the user. Clever use of disambiguation pages can even be used to promote premium features or additional services.
If you have online software, you already know that change is inevitable and constant. Handling the change event is important and zero d
During the good old days, a business could get away with scribbling a note or pecking on a typewriter long after the ribbon should have been replaced and sending it to a customer or potential one. The carbon paper placed between the original to make a copy for in-house records was acceptable even if it smeared. Using whiteout and typing over the mistake even though the correction was still noticeable was not a problem and didn't harm sales. Those were the good 'old days for sure. A handshake and verbal agreement was the way small businesses closed the sale. Big businesses had a more s
- Thomas A. Edison
Zero Downtime Upgrades
Congratulations! The upgrade was a complete success. Using the latest techniques in zero downtime upgrade ingenuity, your IT staff was able to complete the "big rollout" of the new version of your software with no downtime to the end user.
There are many tricks that can be used to do an upgrade with zero downtime. The most common is the "High Confidence Upgrade" where the upgrade is done in place on existing live servers. This requires testing and re-testing to the point where confidence is high that the upgrade will complete error-free and without interruption of service.
If you have the budget, a better option is the "Orphan Upgrade" where new software is installed and tested on separate, often new hardware. The actual upgrade consists simply of redirecting the firewall or load balancer to make the new servers become the live servers. Should something go wrong, the old servers with the old version are still available. If it does work, the former live servers become "orphaned" and are used to stage the next version and the process repeats.
So if the upgrade was so successful, why is your helpdesk phone ringing off the hook?
Fuzzy Downtime
Your precious zero downtime upgrade changed the UI, as most major upgrades do. Sure your application works, but it sure doesn't work like it did before. Any upgrade that breaks the UI is a temporary degradation of service. Since this brownout is not quantifiable we call it fuzzy downtime. And now your users are calling to let you know about it.
You say improvements, your customers say confusion. You say upgrade, your customers say I want the old stuff. All metrics report your application to be working quite well thank you very much. Yet user productivity is off. Complaints are up.
Should you really care? Complete the following survey concerning your attitude about the impact of UI upgrades on end users:
a) Users are a bunch of whiny babies who should learn to adapt
b) We will do hand-holding as needed but we're not really concerned
c) We sent an email telling users about the upgrade
d) We carefully and systematically prepared users for this upgrade. We informed them numerous times in advance of when the upgrade was coming. We provided sneak peaks and training on the new interface. The new UI offers improved help features, better search and disambiguation pages. We also planned for a temporary increase in helpdesk staff to assist with the expected increase in support requests.
If you answered "d", well done! If you answered "c", you get an honorable mention. If you answered "b", your users must be geniuses. If you answered "a", stop reading this article immediately and click over to www.cuteoverload.com for some quick therapy before returning.
And if you are wondering what that disambiguous word was, please read on.
Disambiguations
Wikipedia uses disambiguation as a way to resolve ambiguity. Disambiguations are pages within Wikipedia that lead to different topic pages that share the same term in their title. If you search for "bugs" on Wikipedia, you get a disambiguation page asking if you were looking for the plural of "bug" or Bugs Bunny or something else. The disambiguation page lists several possibilities and allows you to choose.
Could your fuzzy downtime problem be minimized through the use of disambiguation pages? Most certainly it can! For starters, when a user clicks on "help", do you really know what they want? Provide a disambiguation page for clarification. For example:
You are looking for help. Did you want to. . .
Contact us for technical support?
View our FAQs?
Look at our Top 10 Knowledge-Base Articles?
Browse our Online Help?
Search for Something in Particular?
Disambiguation pages can help users adapt to the new look and feel of your software. Once you embrace the concept of disambiguation pages, you realize they empower the user. Clever use of disambiguation pages can even be used to promote premium features or additional services.
If you have online software, you already know that change is inevitable and constant. Handling the change event is important and zero do
Isn’t your #1 goal to get people to your website – traffic, right? No, the ultimate goal is to create a list – isn’t it? Isn’t the “money in the list?” Well, close. You’re right in that money is the ultimate goal through conversion of visitors. m Of course, there are many ways to generate traffic to your website, metrics to calculate your conversion rate, etc. But that’s not what I want to talk about. We are talking about the personal touch – yes, even in internet marketing.Believe it or not, traffic is not that difficult to generate and there are all kinds of e-books and ar
So if the upgrade was so successful, why is your helpdesk phone ringing off the hook?
Fuzzy Downtime
Your precious zero downtime upgrade changed the UI, as most major upgrades do. Sure your application works, but it sure doesn't work like it did before. Any upgrade that breaks the UI is a temporary degradation of service. Since this brownout is not quantifiable we call it fuzzy downtime. And now your users are calling to let you know about it.
You say improvements, your customers say confusion. You say upgrade, your customers say I want the old stuff. All metrics report your application to be working quite well thank you very much. Yet user productivity is off. Complaints are up.
Should you really care? Complete the following survey concerning your attitude about the impact of UI upgrades on end users:
a) Users are a bunch of whiny babies who should learn to adapt
b) We will do hand-holding as needed but we're not really concerned
c) We sent an email telling users about the upgrade
d) We carefully and systematically prepared users for this upgrade. We informed them numerous times in advance of when the upgrade was coming. We provided sneak peaks and training on the new interface. The new UI offers improved help features, better search and disambiguation pages. We also planned for a temporary increase in helpdesk staff to assist with the expected increase in support requests.
If you answered "d", well done! If you answered "c", you get an honorable mention. If you answered "b", your users must be geniuses. If you answered "a", stop reading this article immediately and click over to www.cuteoverload.com for some quick therapy before returning.
And if you are wondering what that disambiguous word was, please read on.
Disambiguations
Wikipedia uses disambiguation as a way to resolve ambiguity. Disambiguations are pages within Wikipedia that lead to different topic pages that share the same term in their title. If you search for "bugs" on Wikipedia, you get a disambiguation page asking if you were looking for the plural of "bug" or Bugs Bunny or something else. The disambiguation page lists several possibilities and allows you to choose.
Could your fuzzy downtime problem be minimized through the use of disambiguation pages? Most certainly it can! For starters, when a user clicks on "help", do you really know what they want? Provide a disambiguation page for clarification. For example:
You are looking for help. Did you want to. . .
Contact us for technical support?
View our FAQs?
Look at our Top 10 Knowledge-Base Articles?
Browse our Online Help?
Search for Something in Particular?
Disambiguation pages can help users adapt to the new look and feel of your software. Once you embrace the concept of disambiguation pages, you realize they empower the user. Clever use of disambiguation pages can even be used to promote premium features or additional services.
If you have online software, you already know that change is inevitable and constant. Handling the change event is important and zero d
Logo is an important element of marketing any brand. Having an elusive and appealing visual identity will not only provides a brand with essential recognition, but will also ensures the success of it. Thus, it is safe to conclude that a logo is the single most important part of building a long term impression on customers, along with proper marketing strategy.It is absolutely necessary for all corporate bodies to express something unique about the company and so, here comes the importance of custom logo design. The importance of custom logo design cannot be neglected in today’s
Should you really care? Complete the following survey concerning your attitude about the impact of UI upgrades on end users:
a) Users are a bunch of whiny babies who should learn to adapt
b) We will do hand-holding as needed but we're not really concerned
c) We sent an email telling users about the upgrade
d) We carefully and systematically prepared users for this upgrade. We informed them numerous times in advance of when the upgrade was coming. We provided sneak peaks and training on the new interface. The new UI offers improved help features, better search and disambiguation pages. We also planned for a temporary increase in helpdesk staff to assist with the expected increase in support requests.
If you answered "d", well done! If you answered "c", you get an honorable mention. If you answered "b", your users must be geniuses. If you answered "a", stop reading this article immediately and click over to www.cuteoverload.com for some quick therapy before returning.
And if you are wondering what that disambiguous word was, please read on.
Disambiguations
Wikipedia uses disambiguation as a way to resolve ambiguity. Disambiguations are pages within Wikipedia that lead to different topic pages that share the same term in their title. If you search for "bugs" on Wikipedia, you get a disambiguation page asking if you were looking for the plural of "bug" or Bugs Bunny or something else. The disambiguation page lists several possibilities and allows you to choose.
Could your fuzzy downtime problem be minimized through the use of disambiguation pages? Most certainly it can! For starters, when a user clicks on "help", do you really know what they want? Provide a disambiguation page for clarification. For example:
You are looking for help. Did you want to. . .
Contact us for technical support?
View our FAQs?
Look at our Top 10 Knowledge-Base Articles?
Browse our Online Help?
Search for Something in Particular?
Disambiguation pages can help users adapt to the new look and feel of your software. Once you embrace the concept of disambiguation pages, you realize they empower the user. Clever use of disambiguation pages can even be used to promote premium features or additional services.
If you have online software, you already know that change is inevitable and constant. Handling the change event is important and zero d
Some 8 months ago, my brother in law returned from America singing the praises of a course he had been on which had given him the knowledge to be able to reach a number one ranking for any keyword within Google and all the other major search engines. Happy days I thought! I could foresee the end of years being a civil servant and listening to bosses who thought the unimportant things in life were actually important! Money it seemed actually did grow on trees – all it took to do this would be a couple of months hard work between my husband and my brother in law and I and we’d be raking
If you answered "d", well done! If you answered "c", you get an honorable mention. If you answered "b", your users must be geniuses. If you answered "a", stop reading this article immediately and click over to www.cuteoverload.com for some quick therapy before returning.
And if you are wondering what that disambiguous word was, please read on.
Disambiguations
Wikipedia uses disambiguation as a way to resolve ambiguity. Disambiguations are pages within Wikipedia that lead to different topic pages that share the same term in their title. If you search for "bugs" on Wikipedia, you get a disambiguation page asking if you were looking for the plural of "bug" or Bugs Bunny or something else. The disambiguation page lists several possibilities and allows you to choose.
Could your fuzzy downtime problem be minimized through the use of disambiguation pages? Most certainly it can! For starters, when a user clicks on "help", do you really know what they want? Provide a disambiguation page for clarification. For example:
You are looking for help. Did you want to. . .
Contact us for technical support?
View our FAQs?
Look at our Top 10 Knowledge-Base Articles?
Browse our Online Help?
Search for Something in Particular?
Disambiguation pages can help users adapt to the new look and feel of your software. Once you embrace the concept of disambiguation pages, you realize they empower the user. Clever use of disambiguation pages can even be used to promote premium features or additional services.
If you have online software, you already know that change is inevitable and constant. Handling the change event is important and zero d
Several people that I know have made the statement that they would like to open their own business. This is a growing trend in our economy. People are opening business to become their own boss. Baby boomers are retiring and trying out new careers by opening small enterprises. To open a business, a person must realize that there is a lot of work and sacrifice to be given. Even when doing this, the odds are against you but the ride is one of the most fulfilling things that you will do. I will provide six things needed to make starting your own business easier.Passion is Essential
You are looking for help. Did you want to. . .
Contact us for technical support?
View our FAQs?
Look at our Top 10 Knowledge-Base Articles?
Browse our Online Help?
Search for Something in Particular?
Disambiguation pages can help users adapt to the new look and feel of your software. Once you embrace the concept of disambiguation pages, you realize they empower the user. Clever use of disambiguation pages can even be used to promote premium features or additional services.
If you have online software, you already know that change is inevitable and constant. Handling the change event is important and zero downtime upgrades are a great way to do it. But the release itself is only the first step. Every manager should look for new ways to help users cope with the added complexity and ambiguity each new release brings.
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