“Houston, we have a problem…”
Most of us are probably familiar with the iconic line from the “Apollo 13” film; you may have even used it a time or 2 yourself.
Each day, information technology (IT) professionals work diligently to maintain a stable network and ensure IT services are available when you need them. Sometimes, however, we hit a snag. So where can you go to find out more about service outages or maintenance? We don’t have Mission Control like NASA, but we do have the Outages page and the System & Networks Control Center (SNCC).
Visit the UW–Madison Outages page
More about the Outages page
The Outages page displays both planned maintenance and service outages.
- Planned maintenance is scheduled ahead of time and often takes place during odd hours of the day to minimize the impact on users. The goal is to proactively update or patch services before an outage occurs.
- The outages section displays current service issues or outages. The date, time and status of the outage are listed.
If you’re experiencing tech trouble, reach out to the Help Desk to report the issue and explore possible solutions. Reports from campus users are among the main ways we learn about unplanned service outages.
Stay in the loop
There are a few ways to stay up-to-date on maintenance and outages.
- Bookmark the Outages page
- Subscribe to the scheduled outages RSS feed
- Subscribe to the unplanned outages RSS feed
- Subscribe to a specific outage to get recent updates and to be notified when the outage is closed. (Note: be sure to use your UW preferred email when subscribing).
Have feedback for the Outages page? Questions or comments can be sent to outagepage@lists.wisc.edu.
Universities of Wisconsin Outages page
There is also an Outages page for the Universities of Wisconsin (formerly referred to as UW System). This page is similar to the UW–Madison Outages page but displays outages or planned maintenance affecting some or all of the UW universities.
Random, fun fact
Jim Lovell, astronaut and commander of the Apollo 13 mission, is an alumnus of UW–Madison! You can learn more about him and the Apollo 13 mission in this UW Alumni news post.