Announcement Policy
Written by Marissa Orsini
Updated at February 4th, 2025
Table of Contents
Purpose
Our goal is to provide frequent and transparent communication with our partners and clients. We realize that not all our messages carry the same urgency and that each partner will have their preference as to how they wish to receive such updates. To that end, we employ various channels to send these communications. Below you will find a list of the official communications channels along with the types of messages you can expect to receive from each.
Internal Use Only
Note: Any major incidents require ELT notification before sending any announcements. MI announcements will be contained within the War Room teams channel, and the associated Major Incident thread. The communications lead will be responsible for reviewing the announcements and pushing those out per the Major Incident Response Process doc stipulations.
Who
Announcements may only be posted by authorized personnel. That list includes ELT, CSE, Marketing and Solutions Hub. Marketing must review and approve all public or partner facing announcements prior to being posted.
How
All announcements (including MI notices) must come directly from a department manager and be put in the “All Managers” channel on teams for approval and to notify the internal team. Managers will be responsible for making sure their teams are aware of announcements as they see fit.
To make an announcement please tag the appropriate party according to the schedule below
- Monday - Friday, 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM EST: Tag @announcement_tag in All Managers channel in teams
- All other times: Tag @announcement_tag in CSE > General.
The order of who is responsible for putting out announcements if the name above is unavailable is as follows:
- Stephanie Cannoles or approved marketing personnel
- Garrett Heggem
- Steven Spaulding
- Marissa Orsini
When
You must notify the announcement tag at least 10 mins prior to the posting deadline if the announcement is to be pushed out immediately. Otherwise, announcement requests must come 24 hours prior to the deadline to post.
Order of Posting
- Uptime Robot (must go first as it requires a time selection in the future)
- Discord
- Mailchimp
- Partner Central
All Announcements Must Include
- Time/Date
- What occurred
- Who is affected
- When the issue began or was identified. Whichever is earlier.
- Any workaround
- Any pending or completed resolution
- Outcome of said event
- (Optional for all but MIRs) How we plan to prevent the issue in the future.
- (Ongoing Events Only) When to expect the next update
Ongoing Response and Communication Phases
- Alerting Phase - Incident is first identified. Initial announcement should be within 15 minutes of the incident occurring.
- Identification Phase - Determine scope, impact, and workarounds. We receive monitoring alerts, client notifications, and NOC notifications. Announcement updates will go out every (1) hour.
- Investigation Phase - We are reviewing cases, and identifying symptoms and potential underlying causes. (Includes testing workarounds) Root causes and more permanent workarounds are being developed. Announcement updates will go out every (1) hour.
- Working Resolution Phase – Move to this phase once the problem has been identified and a solution is being implemented. May be temporary or permanent. Announcement updates will go out every (1) hour.
- Monitoring Phase or Post-Resolution Phase – Incident has been resolved and is monitored for 48 hours (or as needed per CSE). Announcement updates will go out every 24 hours.
-
Resolved Phase - Incident has been confirmed as resolved. MIR is to be delivered within 3 business days after the QC stage is deemed complete. No further updates.
Maintenance Announcement Template
Notice/Update:
<Update would include details as to what is happening, important need to know details, and initial reports>
Maintenance Start: Time (am/pm), Date, ET
Estimated Time to Complete: xx hours + maintenance end (Time (am/pm), Date, ET)
Offline Services
<reference the list of services to determine what services are currently offline>
Degraded Services
<reference the list of services to determine what services are in a degraded state>
Operational Services
<reference the list of services to determine what services are still operational>
We appreciate your patience throughout this process. If you need additional support, please contact [email protected]. For more real-time status updates, as well as discussion please join our Discord (not official support)
List of Services to itemize by Operational, Degraded or Offline:
- Inbound Calling – ATL
- Outbound Calling -ATL
- Inbound Calling – GRR
- Outbound Calling -GRR
- Inbound Calling – LAS
- Outbound Calling - LAS
- API
- Fax
- Messaging
- Teammate Connector
- Mobile X
- Mobile Apps
- Integrations
Where Announcements Will be Posted
- Discord - #announcements channel - https://go.oit.co/discord
- Partner Central - https://partners.oit.co
- Status Page - https://status.oitvoip.com
- Knowledgebase - https://voipdocs.io
- Email - If you are not currently receiving email notifications from OIT and would like your email to be added, please email [email protected]. In your request, please identify the email address(es) to be added, the company name, the name of the party associated with the email address, and the partner type.
Service Impacting
Message Type |
Discord | Partner Central | Status Page | KB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Initial investigation before issues are confirmed | Y | ||||
| Maintenance | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| System Updates | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| System-wide issues | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Subprocessor Events | Y | Y |
Other Announcements
| Message Type | Discord | Partner Central | Status Page | KB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Announcements | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Events and Webinars | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| Pricing Discussions | Y | ||||
| Pricing Updates | Y | Y | |||
| Product Releases | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
| Roadmap and product discussions | Y |