💡Quality Insight: Is it time for #is-it-down?

If you were online last Wednesday, you might have heard or experienced Slack’s outage. Many teams and communities use Slack’s online messaging system. I’m a fan. And, I’m familiar with software. So, to go down for an entire day feels so bad. I feel you Slack. I feel you.

This, however, is not a commentary on testing or how I think Slack should carry out its releases. That is none of my business. What is my business is to know when Slack, or any third parties we use are affected by an outage.

This is why we have an #is-it-down channel.

TL;DR

Make one channel available to the entire company that only reports on third-party outages.

🗒️ Note: The following outlines how to create an #is-it-down for your organization in Slack. If you know how to do this for Microsoft Teams, feel free to comment! I’d love to know!

🗒️ Additional Note: If the option to “Manage apps” is not available to you, feel free to reach out to your Administrator to discuss current permissions or to request that they create an #is-it-down channel.

Why #is-it-down?

Ever had the experience of thinking that your functionality is being affected by something you did, only to discover that it was a third-party service creating the confusion? Any good technology is not a stand-alone creation. Many require third-party services to create an experience that is as useful and desirable. Knowing when a third-party service is down clears confusion for the team and creates the opportunity to communicate issues quickly to external parties relying on your services.

Does the name matter?

As always, naming things is important. The name itself does not matter as long as it clearly communicates what the channel is for and why others should join it.

How do I set it up?

First, of course, agree on a name and create the channel in Slack.

Next, think of a third-party service your organization uses. In this case, we will use the GitHub status page. Most pages, thankfully, have a dropdown option where you can click the Slack symbol. Click it.

Click the “Subscribe via Slack” button

A page will open detailing that Statuspage is requesting permissions to access that particular Slack workspace.

Search for your channel in the “Where should Statuspage post?” and click “Allow”.

🫛 Easy peasy!

If you can’t subscribe to a Status page using the option above, your next option typically is through an RSS feed.

For this example, we will use Slack.

From the Slack status page, there should be a mention of an RSS feed. Right-click that link and select “Copy Link Address”

From the top of your Slack Team workspace, click on the dropdown arrow, click “Tools & settings”, and click “Manage apps”

From the “Installed apps” page, search for the RSS. Click “RSS”.

From the RSS app page, click “App Details”

From the “App Details” page, paste the RSS feed link you copied into the “Feed URL” field and search for the channel you want the status to report. Click “Subscribe to this feed”

💥 You’re done! Now, any time any third party is experiencing an off day, you and your team will be aware of it as soon as the third party updates its status page.

And, while it’s never a good time for a service to go down, it’s always a good time to be gracious and to make something useful.

Till next time…

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Written with Aurora Borealis Banjo [ARKTOUROS] - calm nostalgic spacefolk ambience playing in the background