Planned work should never read as an outage.
Announce the window in advance, take over the page banner while it is running, and leave a record of what you scheduled next to what actually happened.
Unlimited maintenance windows on every plan, including Free.
12 Mar, 02:00 — 04:00 UTC
- Status
- In progress
- Updates
- 3
- Affected
- API, Database
- Posted
- 5 days ahead
Four fields and a start date.
A maintenance window belongs to one status page. It goes into the upcoming list the moment you save it, which is the whole point of scheduling it in advance.
- Title
- What you are doing, in the words a customer would use. Up to 255 characters.
- Description
- The detail: what will be unavailable, for roughly how long, and whether anything is required of them. Up to 4,000 characters.
- Scheduled start
- When you intend to begin. This is what visitors see in the upcoming list.
- Scheduled end
- When you intend to finish. It has to be after the start.
- Affected services
- Any monitors on this page. They are shown as affected on the maintenance detail page.
Scheduled, in progress, completed.
Each update you post carries one of the three statuses, and the newest update sets the state of the window. Moving it to in progress records the actual start; completing it records the actual end.
Scheduled
The window is announced. It appears in the upcoming maintenance list on your status page from the moment you create it, so customers can see it coming.
In progress
You post an in-progress update when the work actually begins. The window takes over the top banner on the page and stays there until you close it out.
Completed
You post a completed update when the work is finished. The banner clears and the window moves into past maintenance. Nothing more can be posted to it afterwards.
Because both timestamps are captured as they happen, the public page can show what you scheduled beside what you actually did — including the windows you finished early.
A window has its own log, like an incident does.
Post as many updates as the work needs. Every one is timestamped, appended to the public timeline, and permanent — updates cannot be edited or deleted once posted.
- ScheduledMar 6, 09:14 UTC
We will be migrating the primary database to new hardware on 12 March, 02:00–04:00 UTC. The API will be read-only for roughly 20 minutes during the switchover.
- In progressMar 12, 02:04 UTC
Maintenance has started. The API is accepting reads. Writes will return 503 during the switchover.
- In progressMar 12, 03:12 UTC
Switchover complete and writes are back. We are verifying replication before closing the window.
- CompletedMar 12, 03:41 UTC
Maintenance is complete, 19 minutes ahead of the scheduled window. All services are operating normally.
Three places a window appears.
Before, during and after — without anyone having to go looking for it.
Upcoming maintenance
Windows that have not started yet are listed separately on the page with their scheduled times, so a customer who visits on Tuesday knows about Saturday night.
The banner, while it runs
An in-progress window takes the top banner, showing the title and the scheduled range, and links straight to the detail page.
Past maintenance
Completed windows move into the page’s maintenance history, which shows the 10 most recent.
Its own public page
Every window has a permanent URL on your status page carrying the description, scheduled and actual times, affected services and the whole update timeline. Paste it into a customer email.
Affected services named
The monitors you attached are listed on the detail page, so nobody has to guess whether the thing they use is included.
Live without refreshing
Pages poll every 30 seconds. An update you post mid-window reaches everyone already watching without them reloading.
Read moreMaintenance wins the banner.
If a window is in progress, that is what your users see at the top of the page — even if an incident is open at the same time. The incident is still listed, still linked, and still on the page.
- 01Maintenance in progress
A window you have moved to in progress. It outranks everything, so planned work is never shown to your users as an unexplained outage.
- 02Highest-impact active incident
Otherwise, the open incident with the highest impact, along with its most recent update.
- 03Auto-detected outage
Otherwise, a notice that a monitor on the page is failing even though no incident has been declared.
Two things people assume, that are not true here.
Both of these will bite you at 02:00 if you find out then instead of now.
Nothing flips a window at its scheduled time. The status only moves when somebody posts an update carrying the new status, which is also what stamps the actual start and end. A window whose scheduled start has passed still reads as upcoming until you post an in-progress update, and a window you finished quietly stays on the banner until you post a completed one.
A maintenance window changes what your page says. It does not change what StatusOwl does. Checks keep running on their normal interval, automatic incidents can still open during the window if a monitor fails three checks in a row, and Watch Owl alert rules keep evaluating. The only thing that stops a monitor being checked is that monitor’s own maintenance-mode toggle, which you set per monitor and not per window.
Nobody is notified
Scheduling a window publishes it to the page. There is no subscriber list on StatusOwl status pages, so an announcement reaches the people who visit and nobody else. Send the email yourself and link the window.
Audit-logged
Creating a window, posting an update, starting it and completing it are all recorded with who did it and when — on every plan, including Free.
One page at a time
A window belongs to a single status page. If the same work affects two pages, schedule it on each — which also lets you word it differently for customers and for staff.
Read moreTell them before you take it down.
Free forever on one page, with your own domain and automatic SSL. Unlimited maintenance windows on every plan.