Status pages have evolved quite a bit over the last few years. Not that long ago you would have been lucky to find a simple up/down indicator, but today organizations are truly embracing transparency. They are providing their end users with critical metrics, incident data, maintenance calendars and even the status of their own service provider technologies.
Here at StatusCast we consider ourselves, well, sort of experts when it comes to status pages and have seen everything from a DIY’ers nightmare to Fortune 500 glory. There are lots of great pages out there, and we’d like to share a few status page examples that we’ve taken notice of the last few years. But, before we dive into our ‘greatest hits’ we should share our criteria for what makes for a good IT status page ?
A good IT status page is one that allows your end-users to quickly digest what is going on with your organization. This means (above all else) that if there is an ongoing event, whether it’s planned or not, that it’s easily identifiable. Ultimately status pages are a tool for creating organizational transparency, so if a page is burying the problem or sharing the issue in a cryptic format, then it’s not doing what it was meant to do from an end-user’s perspective.
Ideal status pages come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and can utilize a wide array of features. Here’s our top status page picks that showcase some of the cool things you can do with a status page and the critical features required to do so.
QuickBase provides an application development platform that enables people to build business applications without coding.
Not every status page shares an uptime metric with it’s end-users, but, for those that do, it’s often the most critical part of their status page. QuickBase relies on their uptime metric so that existing clients can validate any SLA’s they have in place, but the uptime also serves as a tool in their sales arsenal. Most people who have gone through the software procurement process have likely asked about the resiliency of the product and what better tool could any sales rep have then a status page showing near 100% uptime? Use your status page as a way to show off your organization’s resiliency not only to existing customers but to prospective clients as well.
Recognize is a social employee recognition & rewards program. It includes nominations and service anniversaries, and has best-in-class enterprise integrations.
Status pages can be used for so much more than just communicating downtime and outages to your end-users. Recognize uses their status page to publish company and product updates to keep their end-users updated about everything company wide. This puts a positive spin on your status page as it is no longer just a resource for communicating problems, it can become a full communication platform for your organization to keep your end-users informed of everything going on, both good and bad.
MRI Software is a provider of real estate and investment management software to real estate owners, investors and operators.
Status pages focus on informing end-users about what is going on with an organization, and generally end-users can view the live information or just sign up to receive notifications. What happens when a user goes to your status page because they encountered an issue that you weren’t aware of yet? Even though many organizations will know about an issue before the end-user, it doesn’t always mean everyone internally is in the know. If this scenario arose, MRI wanted their status page to be a bit more interactive with their end users. That’s why they added a custom Report an outage button on their status page. This directs users to an existing MRI resource that allows users to report SaaS outages. Now MRI’s status page serves as a tool that not only informs end-users, but also allows them to be interactive.
Epicor provides enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and human capital management (HCM) software to business customers in both Software as a Service (SaaS) and On-Premises deployment models.
Epicor maintains several products, which can often become difficult for organizations to display in the context of a single status page. To address this issue, Epicor adjusted the layout of the primary widget so that each product is organized by tabs and not just presented in a single long list.
Veeva offers cloud-based business solutions for the Global Life Sciences Industry.
Veeva offers a wide variety of cloud business solutions and their status page has a wealth of information as a result. When your status page has a lot going on you must consider the end-user’s view because too much data can be a bit overwhelming. Veeva handles this concern by ensuring their list of components is initially collapsed and by offering a full calendar view of their posts. With as many components and services as Veeva offers, the calendar view is the perfect way for end-users to see the big picture without having to dig through the trenches to get the information they need.
Trice Imaging provides a faster, cheaper and more efficient way for physicians to communicate and collaborate on medical images from anywhere.
Status pages typically have information about recent incidents, but often there’s not much more offered than that. Adding metrics to your page can add a lot of value as you can share real-time performance information, or really any kind of data about your organization over time. In this status page example, Trice offers it’s end-users response time data so that they can get a sense of how fast things are operating at any given time. Offering historical metrics on your status page also acts as a great sales tool; as your reps have a resource to show-off your apps’ general performance and alleviate any question of reliability.
Onshift provides award winning workforce management software for hiring, scheduling, engaging and retaining long-term care and senior living staff.
In today’s SaaS driven world, many organizations rely on at least one, if not several, cloud based solutions to run their business/infrastructure. OnShift hosts part of their platform on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and has elected to share AWS’ status directly on their status page. Most SaaS providers have their own status page, so you can fully equip your own page to share their statuses, giving your end-users the complete picture regarding your organization’s health and status.
VIOOH gives media buyers a transparent platform that ensures advertising messages are 100% viewable, brand safe and seen by bot free, targeted audiences.
Reporting unplanned incidents is generally considered the primary activity for any status page, but for many organizations this is not the case. Keeping users informed of scheduled maintenance is just as important, especially when those planned events cause downtime. In this status page example, VIOOH’s status page includes upcoming maintenance schedules at the top of their page, so any user visiting the status page can plan accordingly. Giving users a glimpse into your maintenance schedule helps them plan their work accordingly to minimize affects on productivity.
MediaSilo offers secure video sharing and a workflow solution for content and production teams of any size.
MediaSilo’s website has a lot of great design elements that their team wanted to be carried over to their status page, so they took their website’s existing header and added it to their StatusCast page, making their status page appear to be just another page within their overall site. This is a fantastic strategy to ensure that your end-users know that the information they are seeing on the status page is coming directly from the organization and not some third-party that is posting basic information.
Are you looking to implement an IT Status Page to keep your internal and external stakeholders informed of your organization’s IT status? Or, do you have an IT status page that you want to take to the next level, taking inspiration from some of these status page examples? If these scenarios describe your situation, let’s connect.
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