Communication channels when billing panel is offline

mikho

I’ve thinking once or twice on where to redirect questions/support tickets when billing panel is unreachable.

This post ( https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/11117/#Comment_11117 ) made me wonder if discord is the way to go or if Twitter is ”good enough”?

Perhaps something else? What would your preferred way to get in touch if something happened?

Please refrain from answering with forum and PM as a way of contact.

Solaire

Plain old email. Twitter is mostly public and Discord is a pain to navigate between messages and servers. Plus everyone has email, few have Twitter and Discord handles.

mikho

@Solaire said:
Plain old email. Twitter is mostly public and Discord is a pain to navigate between messages and servers. Plus everyone has email, few have Twitter and Discord handles.

I’ve had a few bounces when it comes to email and there is always the few that makes their voice heard about ”not getting the email”.

Solaire

@mikho said:

@Solaire said:
Plain old email. Twitter is mostly public and Discord is a pain to navigate between messages and servers. Plus everyone has email, few have Twitter and Discord handles.

I’ve had a few bounces when it comes to email and there is always the few that makes their voice heard about ”not getting the email”.

I get that but when it comes to numbers even with bouncing email you have a much larger audience with email as a means of communication. Worst case, if email bounces, you pop a ticket as soon as the billing panel is back up.

gamermaxmail42

This happened to me just now,
https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/11127/#Comment_11127

Put a nice announcement on the website. Email if there would be a down time.
Please use a decent Live Chat solution.
Don't make me register on things like Discord(I don't think anyone apart from kids use it)

Use Twitter as a last resort when your billing panel and main website are both unreachable.

mikho

@gamermaxmail42 said:
This happened to me just now,
https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/11127/#Comment_11127

Put a nice announcement on the website. Email if there would be a down time.
Please use a decent Live Chat solution.
Don't make me register on things like Discord(I don't think anyone apart from kids use it)

Use Twitter as a last resort when your billing panel and main website are both unreachable.

Live chat will never happen if have something to say about my business

Personally I’m not fond of Discord/irc/live chats. I would use it for casual chat, not business related.

Might setup a status page where announcements regarding outages could be posted.

gamermaxmail42

@mikho I am glad you are thinking about all of these scenarios.

flips

@mikho said: I’ve thinking once or twice on where to redirect questions/support tickets when billing panel is unreachable.

Hm, MXRoute uses Rocket.chat, works well, but the charm there is that it uses OAuth or something from WHMCS, IIRC, so if if the panel is down, that doesn't help too much for those who are not already authenticated with the chat server ...

I watch both RSS and Twitter feeds, but usually there's quite a few people who misses announcements in channels like that.

@mikho said: Please refrain from answering with forum and PM as a way of contact.

Hm, good to know. I might have communicated something through PM's here that should have gone in a ticket.
(You might want to change the "http://forum.lowendspirit.com Support using" in your ordering system, BTW.
Maybe that's exactly what you're working on ... )

Amitz

Discord is cancer. I can check Twitter messages via browser even without having a twitter account. Discord is cancer.

WSS

NEVER DISCORD. NEVER.

Amitz

What @WSS said.

Ympker

It's meant for changelogs but for pushing important notifications could work just the same: https://headwayapp.co/

Although I use Discord, it feels crowded with channels (I have joined like 80 and I hate the fact) so I wouldn't use it as an emergency status page. I think Twitter wouldn't even be bad if just for notifying. I have often enough found myself not replying to tweets since I don't have a Twitter account and cba to create one but just for reading announcements..why not?

mikho

@flips said:

@mikho said: I’ve thinking once or twice on where to redirect questions/support tickets when billing panel is unreachable.

Hm, MXRoute uses Rocket.chat, works well, but the charm there is that it uses OAuth or something from WHMCS, IIRC, so if if the panel is down, that doesn't help too much for those who are not already authenticated with the chat server ...

That is, if it can be cached in some way to authenticate without actually saving the real information.

@flips said:

@mikho said: Please refrain from answering with forum and PM as a way of contact.

Hm, good to know. I might have communicated something through PM's here that should have gone in a ticket.

Well, I would answer but it might not be the first place where I would look.
Example: I still get a couple of PM on LET, with the broken email notification, I never know that there is a PM waiting for me.

@flips said:
(You might want to change the "http://forum.lowendspirit.com Support using" in your ordering system, BTW.
Maybe that's exactly what you're working on ... )

You got me
As the ”old” LES is moving into another direction as the community support that it used to be, I am looking for alternatives.
I will still suggest all customers to sign up here as this place will answer most commonly asked questions.

FHR

A status page, hosted by a 3rd party (or on a 3rd party's infrastructure) helps.

mikewazar

@FHR said:
A status page, hosted by a 3rd party (or on a 3rd party's infrastructure) helps.

On a different domain (ei not a subdomain) like some providers do, adds to more things that need to go wrong to be completely down.

cybertech

Email and another medium so those email bouncers can have external reference

sonic

Twitter

Francisco

@mikho said: This post ( https://talk.lowendspirit.com/discussion/comment/11117/#Comment_11117 ) made me wonder if discord is the way to go or if Twitter is ”good enough”?

Honestly we seem to have better reach use Discord or email than Twitter.

The upgrade itself was done in around 10 minutes. We took snapshots of both the SQL and webservers, applied the update, logged in. Its only once we did our final check overs did we see that things weren't lining up.

It extending as far as it did was me trying to figure out what was going on and hoping I could salvage things. It didn't work out so we simply rolled back the snapshots.

Francisco

Nyr

The billing panel can be offiline, but barring a few exceptions, you will be able to display a status message in the first place where I would go if I need your help. Email is absolutely required too, if I need to contact you.

Twitter and other social networks can be used as important communication channels, but not exclusively.

I only find Discord reasonable as a primary communication method if you are selling Minecraft servers.

Mr_Tom

Email. If I had to join discord for stuff like from a provider I'd probably move elsewhere.

tgl

keep it simple, use twitter, everybody knows about it, you can also post marketing stuff there

nobody is gonna install any tool or use some service just to wait for your 3 messages a year about outages, trust me on that, not to mention that this panel down issue will likely never happen

mikho

@tgl said:
not to mention that this panel down issue will likely never happen

Oh, trust me.... it has happened. More than once during my years as a provider.

tgl

@mikho said:

@tgl said:
not to mention that this panel down issue will likely never happen

Oh, trust me.... it has happened. More than once during my years as a provider.

set up a docker swarm or some kind of HA for the panel, in this way it will never die, you have the servers so its not an extra cost, the extra cost would be the anycast ip, but I think @AnthonySmith has some friend that can help you with a discount, I forgot the provider name

mikho

@tgl said:

@mikho said:

@tgl said:
not to mention that this panel down issue will likely never happen

Oh, trust me.... it has happened. More than once during my years as a provider.

set up a docker swarm or some kind of HA for the panel, in this way it will never die, you have the servers so its not an extra cost, the extra cost would be the anycast ip, but I think @AnthonySmith has some friend that can help you with a discount, I forgot the provider name

The problem is not the technology. It’s my time.
I have two jobs and this ”hobby”.

poisson

Email should be primary, with a backup status page?

InceptionHosting

@poisson said:
Email should be primary, with a backup status page?

Sending 20,000 emails to 50% free email accounts (gmail etc) cant be primary because it takes too long

Ympker

@mikho said:

@tgl said:

@mikho said:

@tgl said:
not to mention that this panel down issue will likely never happen

Oh, trust me.... it has happened. More than once during my years as a provider.

set up a docker swarm or some kind of HA for the panel, in this way it will never die, you have the servers so its not an extra cost, the extra cost would be the anycast ip, but I think @AnthonySmith has some friend that can help you with a discount, I forgot the provider name

The problem is not the technology. It’s my time.
I have two jobs and this ”hobby”.

Did you give https://headwayapp.co a try?

mikho

@Ympker said:

@mikho said:

@tgl said:

@mikho said:

@tgl said:
not to mention that this panel down issue will likely never happen

Oh, trust me.... it has happened. More than once during my years as a provider.

set up a docker swarm or some kind of HA for the panel, in this way it will never die, you have the servers so its not an extra cost, the extra cost would be the anycast ip, but I think @AnthonySmith has some friend that can help you with a discount, I forgot the provider name

The problem is not the technology. It’s my time.
I have two jobs and this ”hobby”.

Did you give https://headwayapp.co a try?

Will take a closer look after family left the christmas dinners. (Three intense days with family I usually don’t socialize with that much).

If I’m not checking in an Asylum, I will take a look.

Theres also a couple of status pages on my list.
http://staytus.co/ Being one of them.

WSS

Ya know, you can always setup a github based page if nothing else..

mikho

@WSS said:
Ya know, you can always setup a github based page if nothing else..

I hope that with one of the existing status page alternatives, I could automate the status from my monitoring.

Node goes down, status page is updated.

WSS

@mikho said:
Node goes down, status page is updated.

Well, there's always Hetrix. That's all I use but I don't do anything with the hook beyond notifications, because my tiny little system is pretty much a one-person operation, so I don't need to alert others. I might play with this later, but it sends JSON data you can parse and do similarly with, even updating a static page.

seriesn

Email and maybe a hosted 3rd party status page/outage page would be nice? Or redirection when main site is down?

mikho

Thing is with emails, I don’t want to save all emails on multiple instances.

If the billing panel goes down, it will be a challenge to get the current list to email.
(I know, get a database backup, sql to extract the addresses and send it).

I’m leaning on a status page to update when shit hits the fan, more than when the billing panel goes down.

seriesn

@mikho said:
Thing is with emails, I don’t want to save all emails on multiple instances.

If the billing panel goes down, it will be a challenge to get the current list to email.
(I know, get a database backup, sql to extract the addresses and send it).

I’m leaning on a status page to update when shit hits the fan, more than when the billing panel goes down.

Combined that with hetrix and you got a perfect winner!

mikho

@seriesn said:

@mikho said:
Thing is with emails, I don’t want to save all emails on multiple instances.

If the billing panel goes down, it will be a challenge to get the current list to email.
(I know, get a database backup, sql to extract the addresses and send it).

I’m leaning on a status page to update when shit hits the fan, more than when the billing panel goes down.

Combined that with hetrix and you got a perfect winner!

I already have a HA installation of PRTG

seriesn

@mikho said:

@seriesn said:

@mikho said:
Thing is with emails, I don’t want to save all emails on multiple instances.

If the billing panel goes down, it will be a challenge to get the current list to email.
(I know, get a database backup, sql to extract the addresses and send it).

I’m leaning on a status page to update when shit hits the fan, more than when the billing panel goes down.

Combined that with hetrix and you got a perfect winner!

I already have a HA installation of PRTG

Noice! Was it worth the investment?

mikho

@seriesn said:

@mikho said:

@seriesn said:

@mikho said:
Thing is with emails, I don’t want to save all emails on multiple instances.

If the billing panel goes down, it will be a challenge to get the current list to email.
(I know, get a database backup, sql to extract the addresses and send it).

I’m leaning on a status page to update when shit hits the fan, more than when the billing panel goes down.

Combined that with hetrix and you got a perfect winner!

I already have a HA installation of PRTG

Noice! Was it worth the investment?

0 SEK
Using a 100 free sensor installation plus my current workplace installation with unlimited sensors.

My 2 cents, the best alternative when it comes to self hosted monitoring tools.

MichaelCee

I may be a hypocrite but I have to agree Twitter can't be #1. It's great and all but the reach isn't 100%.

mikho

@SmallWeb said:
I may be a hypocrite but I have to agree Twitter can't be #1. It's great and all but the reach isn't 100%.

I wont call you a hypocrite, I agree that Twitter is a good way to reach out, but it won’t reach 100% of your user base.
Nor will Facebook or any other social media platform or discord.

I’m leaning towards getting a proper status page, everyone who could use the billing panel will be able to see the status page and announcements there.

WSS

@mikho said:
I’m leaning towards getting a proper status page, everyone who could use the billing panel will be able to see the status page and announcements there.

They don't look; they won't look. If you have a chat button, that will be used 99.9423% of the time.

kokkez

Just to say, what about Telegram? Can be used as a channel for one to multi, or as a chat multi to multi.
In my opinion it is usable also as a replacement for skype...

joepie91

@kokkez said:
Just to say, what about Telegram? Can be used as a channel for one to multi, or as a chat multi to multi.
In my opinion it is usable also as a replacement for skype...

Similar to what someone mentioned earlier about Discord: I don't use Telegram. If I need to use Telegram to get information about service issues with a provider, I would look for a different provider.

It might be useful as an extra communication channel, sure. But not as your primary one.

foxone

@WSS said:

NEVER DISCORD. NEVER.

It's ran by furfags. Nuff said

TheLinuxBug

@mikho said:
Thing is with emails, I don’t want to save all emails on multiple instances.

If the billing panel goes down, it will be a challenge to get the current list to email.
(I know, get a database backup, sql to extract the addresses and send it).

I’m leaning on a status page to update when shit hits the fan, more than when the billing panel goes down.

The easiest way I see to handle this issue is to simply have a place that collects e-mails to [email protected] first, then relays the ticket e-mails into the ticket system. This allows you if your billing system has issues, to directly login to the support@ e-mail box and process emergent issues while the billing panel / support desk is down. While it may not immediately create a ticket number, you could at least respond to those needing to be addressed urgently and then once the billing system is back online, the e-mails get forwarded and ticket is generated. If needed you can go back and add comments to the tickets from the replies you sent directly via e-mail while things were down.

This has the benefit of the customer not even having to do much different than they would usually, simply let customers know if they ever have issues submitting a ticket because the billing portal is down or having an issue, that they can just send a simple e-mail to you.

That's how I look at it, at least. Also, while I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, your e-mail platform for your domain shouldn't be on the same server / location as the billing panel, so if the one location goes down you still have access to the other and vise versa.

my 2 cents.

Cheers!

WSS

@foxone said:

@WSS said:

NEVER DISCORD. NEVER.

It's ran by furfags. Yiff yaff

FTFY.

vimalware

A plain text /static html 'site' on a different host, with time-stamped event descriptions.
Link to it in the footer template of your ticket notification emails.

This is all a host needs.
Only communities need a 'Room' for chitchat or meeting-format discussions.

Let's make www great again.

aveline

We have a dedicated domain (https://misaka.fail) which uses different DNS and backend storage to provide status page.

Our email domain is still using our own DNS service so it may be down when our DNS is fully down, but it's unlikely to happen as we have many locations and robust health check system.

terrahost

If I’m not checking in an Asylum, I will take a look.

Theres also a couple of status pages on my list.
http://staytus.co/ Being one of them.

We recently switched to Staytus on terrahoststatus.com. It's great, and with the Markdown mod (see github) you can also format the text nicely

WSS

The fact that you all are shitting over DNS means you don't have enough upstream providers. If you just offsite them all, and have enough transit points, a 404 means that the world is fucking over.

WSS

That said, host.clownpenis.fart isn't the end of the world.

PureVoltage

Always a tricky one, ideally setting up a redundancy system for your support/billing panel area would be best however not as easy to setup.
Maybe a good option would be having a status page with some type of notifications that can be updated if the main site is down. Twitter is public, chat applications are not the best option either.
Email is often a great thing to have, we use email, phone, live chat, and our ticket system. Twitter is kind of a last resort however for major outages that can be at least something.

Sure someone could take some ideas from here and whip up a little service offering.