Ability to add notes with at a specific time rather than just the current time.

[ryangravetteadmin]

As a Status Admin I want the ability to inject notes at a specific time into the timeline so that when I get additional information about an event that occurred in the past I can add when that event occurred with an accurate timestamp.

Use case: I am tracking an Incident on a web page outage. I find out that DNS was changed at 4:10 PM and I was not notified until 4:30 PM. I want to add an event at a specific time (4:10 PM) it occurred 4:10 rather than when I had a chance to post the event. 4:30 PM

[ks888]

Thank you for your suggestion and use case. I guess I understand your use case and the ability you suggested would make the timeline neat.

But I also think the ability to change the past timeline may confuse visitors to a status page in the situation like this (based on your use case):

1. at 4:20PM, a visitor accesses the status page
2. at 4:30PM, the admin adds an event at a specific time (4:10 PM)
3. at 4:40PM, the visitor accesses the status page again

In this case, the visitor may get confused since the event at 4:10 PM appears suddenly. I'm even afraid that it may lose the visitor's trust.

Also, there will be the inconsistency between the timeline of the status page and other systems. For example, when LambStatus supports the functionality to auto-tweet the incident on Twitter, the timeline's difference between the twitter and the status page will be problem.

So I prefer just updating the incident every time the new information is found.

[poswald]

It may be the case that a visitor would be confused if they saw an update that wasn't there when they first viewed the page, as you say.

But… not being able to retroactively fill in what actually happened has the potential to be even more confusing to customers who come later and want to know when the outage was, and adds much stress to the devops people exactly when they don't need it. It can make writing a post-mortem report more difficult for everyone.

I'm afraid this is a non-starter... there's no way I could use this system as-is. I think you need to assume there are use cases you may not be aware of and generally trust your users to do the right thing for the case you highlighted.

[ryangravetteadmin]

I agree, we have not implemented due to this issue.

On Sun, Mar 4, 2018 at 9:06 AM Paul Oswald notifications@github.com wrote:

It may be the case that a visitor would be confused if they saw an update that wasn't there when they first viewed the page, as you say.

But… not being able to retroactively fill in what actually happened has the potential to be even more confusing to customers who come later and want to know when the outage was, and adds much stress to the devops people exactly when they don't need it. It can make writing a post-mortem report more difficult for everyone.

I'm afraid this is a non-starter... there's no way I could use this system as-is. I think you need to assume there are use cases you may not be aware of and generally trust your users to do the right thing for the case you highlighted.

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/ks888/LambStatus/issues/57#issuecomment-370240594, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ADWbfuw190JRexU6iVBcm-OsFFOB5gRwks5tbBDrgaJpZM4O4Ort .

-- Ryan Gravette Technology Director Schedule a meeting https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ryan.gravette%40idla.k12.id.us&ctz=America/Denver&mode=week Idaho Digital Learning Cell- 208.989.5758 twitter - IDLAGravette

[image: newLogo2.jpg]

[ks888]

Hmmm... how about writing accurate timestamps in a message, like this incident report. From this report, I think visitors understand the situation well and will have no trouble to write a post-mortem report. (LambStatus can edit messages later by clicking the pencil icon in the 'Update Incident' dialog. So it is possible to add accurate timestamps into past messages when a situation becomes clearer.)

I'm glad to know a use case in which this method does not work well.

[ks888]

I come up with a new use case. When sysadmins build the first status page, they may want to create some past incident. In such a case, this feature will be very useful.

[ghost]

I definitely agree, in some circumstance it necessary to edit the event timestamp. It's the admin responsibility to use it wisely and not get visitors confused.