IT Department Email Template

Patt

Diamond Member
Jan 30, 2000
5,288
2
81
My IT department (of which I'm a part) sends out a plethora of company-wide communications of virus scares, important maintenance outages etc., and at the moment we are very haphazard with our formatting.

Personally, I ignore most of our messages, because almost none of them apply to me (the virus scares etc. that are intended for information for home use). I have tasked myself with coming up with a communications template for our emails, and have been trying to come up with a succinct format.

Basically I want the emails to have 4 sections:

  • Who - who the message is targetted at
  • What - what the message is, criticality (summary)
  • When - when an outage is
  • Why - detailed description for those interested/affected

Do any of you have a department standard you could share for ideas?
 

oogabooga

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2003
7,806
3
81
Originally posted by: tranceport
All,

Computers are on the fritz again. Run for the hills.


Cheers,

Your Information Technology Team!

:thumbsup:
do you have the first letters in bold and large font and have the preceding letters shrink in size to emulate running for the hills to
 

Patt

Diamond Member
Jan 30, 2000
5,288
2
81
Originally posted by: Tobolo
LOL i wish this could happen where I work. Bunch of IT morons.

This is generally the view of our department, which is the impetus for some sort of standardization. I absolutely hate most of our communications.
 

iamwiz82

Lifer
Jan 10, 2001
30,772
13
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Wouldn't the Who portion be satisfied by sending it to the proper distribution lists, and wouldn't the What be the Subject? ;)
 

DaiShan

Diamond Member
Jul 5, 2001
9,617
1
0
Originally posted by: Patt
Originally posted by: Tobolo
LOL i wish this could happen where I work. Bunch of IT morons.

This is generally the view of our department, which is the impetus for some sort of standardization. I absolutely hate most of our communications.

Why are you guys even bothering with sending out information that doesn't directly impact users work? It's been my experience that users rarely read/comprehend messages from the IT department, so the fewer they receive the better. Perhaps you should limit your communications to work related problems (outtages, maintenance etc) and target only the users/groups that it will affect rather than sending out broadcast messages when the topic only affects 3 members of the sales department.
 

Patt

Diamond Member
Jan 30, 2000
5,288
2
81
Originally posted by: iamwiz82
Wouldn't the Who portion be satisfied by sending it to the proper distribution lists, and wouldn't the What be the Subject? ;)

:D Proper distribution lists ... a dream that I have no control over. Our Exchange Admin really needs to be shown the door, and he is the worst offender sending out copy-pastes of virus bulletins multiple times a week. Keep in mind that these are not for work purposes, but because he thinks he has to show his knowledge/expertise to everyone. You should see his face when I bring this up ... so defensive :D

Unfortunately this is primarily for our company-wide distribution list, but you are correct in terms of the What being the Subject. I'd still like it summarized in an easy-to-read fashion in the body of the email though.
 

Patt

Diamond Member
Jan 30, 2000
5,288
2
81
Originally posted by: DaiShan
Originally posted by: Patt
Originally posted by: Tobolo
LOL i wish this could happen where I work. Bunch of IT morons.

This is generally the view of our department, which is the impetus for some sort of standardization. I absolutely hate most of our communications.

Why are you guys even bothering with sending out information that doesn't directly impact users work? It's been my experience that users rarely read/comprehend messages from the IT department, so the fewer they receive the better. Perhaps you should limit your communications to work related problems (outtages, maintenance etc) and target only the users/groups that it will affect rather than sending out broadcast messages when the topic only affects 3 members of the sales department.

I'm quoting you in my department meeting today :p I want to push the idea that if we send something out, it is important, and will affect the end-user in some way. I don't mind if we use our intranet page (an extreme embarrasment) to put up the virus notices etc., so those interested can check it out (which they never will :p).
 

tranceport

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2000
4,168
1
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www.thesystemsengineer.com
Originally posted by: Patt
Originally posted by: iamwiz82
Wouldn't the Who portion be satisfied by sending it to the proper distribution lists, and wouldn't the What be the Subject? ;)

:D Proper distribution lists ... a dream that I have no control over. Our Exchange Admin really needs to be shown the door, and he is the worst offender sending out copy-pastes of virus bulletins multiple times a week. Keep in mind that these are not for work purposes, but because he thinks he has to show his knowledge/expertise to everyone. You should see his face when I bring this up ... so defensive :D

Unfortunately this is primarily for our company-wide distribution list, but you are correct in terms of the What being the Subject. I'd still like it summarized in an easy-to-read fashion in the body of the email though.

Ooo.. Yeah.. Having been an exchange admin for a fortune 500 I would say this guy needs to go. He's contributing to his own worst enemy. The ever growing exchange information stores.

 

Patt

Diamond Member
Jan 30, 2000
5,288
2
81
Originally posted by: tranceport
Originally posted by: Patt
Originally posted by: iamwiz82
Wouldn't the Who portion be satisfied by sending it to the proper distribution lists, and wouldn't the What be the Subject? ;)

:D Proper distribution lists ... a dream that I have no control over. Our Exchange Admin really needs to be shown the door, and he is the worst offender sending out copy-pastes of virus bulletins multiple times a week. Keep in mind that these are not for work purposes, but because he thinks he has to show his knowledge/expertise to everyone. You should see his face when I bring this up ... so defensive :D

Unfortunately this is primarily for our company-wide distribution list, but you are correct in terms of the What being the Subject. I'd still like it summarized in an easy-to-read fashion in the body of the email though.

Ooo.. Yeah.. Having been an exchange admin for a fortune 500 I would say this guy needs to go. He's contributing to his own worst enemy. The ever growing exchange information stores.

He gets so miffed when people send out a company-wide "For Sale" or "Please contribute" type email, yet doesn't understand he is doing it himself. I rile him up all the time because it is so easy to do, yet I'm really just trying to help curb a problem. Put it this way, he's been here for 16 years, and I've been here for 3, and I'm ahead of him in the succession program. This guy also maintains multiple virus scanners, Spyware scanners and firewalls to ensure that nothing gets by him. His shift starts at 8 and he's here at 6 every day, thinking his altruism is the only thing keeping us spam and virus free. I almost pity him :(

Wait, no I don't :p
 

Tsaico

Platinum Member
Oct 21, 2000
2,669
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0
Yeah, I agree with the ever growing information stores... People just don't want to delete anything.

But as for format, we use the who what when and why along with sending it to the groups that need to know. Rarely do we send anything to the entire community, unless it is a complete outage or something. (we just upgraded all of the switches in the building so everything was down for about 45 min when we moved over 125 server patches and the subsequent closets)
 

QED

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2005
3,428
3
0
When I worked the network staff desk a decade ago, we used a format like:

To: All Users
Subject: IT Information Alert (Scheduled Maintenance-Network Outage)
or (Network Outage, Virus Warning, Email Outage, etc...)


The IT Services Department has issued the following alert:
Type: Scheduled Maintenance--Network Outage
Where: 3rd and 4th Floor, Guild Hall
Who: Guild Hall Wireless Users
Services Affected: All
When: 03/13/07 1:00PM - 03/13/07 3:00PM (ESTIMATED)

Description: Beginnning on March 13th at 1:00PM, Network Services will begin upgrading
the wireless access hardware on the 3rd and 4th floors of Guild Hall. These
upgrades are estimated to last approximately 2 hours. During this time, users
of the wireless network on these floors can expect to see network disruptions.

 

Patt

Diamond Member
Jan 30, 2000
5,288
2
81
Originally posted by: QED
When I worked the network staff desk a decade ago, we used a format like:

To: All Users
Subject: IT Information Alert (Scheduled Maintenance-Network Outage)
or (Network Outage, Virus Warning, Email Outage, etc...)


The IT Services Department has issued the following alert:
Type: Scheduled Maintenance--Network Outage
Where: 3rd and 4th Floor, Guild Hall
Who: Guild Hall Wireless Users
Services Affected: All
When: 03/13/07 1:00PM - 03/13/07 3:00PM (ESTIMATED)

Description: Beginnning on March 13th at 1:00PM, Network Services will begin upgrading
the wireless access hardware on the 3rd and 4th floors of Guild Hall. These
upgrades are estimated to last approximately 2 hours. During this time, users
of the wireless network on these floors can expect to see network disruptions.

Question: Were these emails sent out from a common Systems email, or were they directed from a SysAdmin's user account?
 

QED

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2005
3,428
3
0
They came from a common systems email. To enforce uniformity, the email was sent using an HTML form as the front-end, with drop down boxes/selection boxes for alert type, dates, and who/where fields and fill-in boxes for the other fields. The system would automatically generate an alert id #, as well as construct the subject line, and send the email to the appropriate users based upon the selection for the where and who fields.
 

maximus maximus

Platinum Member
Oct 17, 2004
2,140
0
0
Why dont you send out an email in a tabular form (like an excel). Its easy to maintain and read.

We used to get a whole months schedule mailed to us and they would highlight each weeks outages in the email. Very neat and easy to follow.
 

NuroMancer

Golden Member
Nov 8, 2004
1,684
1
76
To: All Users

Good morning everyone,

We are currently experiencing some problems with the Logon Script. We are working to correct the problem and hope to have it resolved shortly.

Thank you for your patience.

Information Services
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 

Patt

Diamond Member
Jan 30, 2000
5,288
2
81
Originally posted by: QED
They came from a common systems email. To enforce uniformity, the email was sent using an HTML form as the front-end, with drop down boxes/selection boxes for alert type, dates, and who/where fields and fill-in boxes for the other fields. The system would automatically generate an alert id #, as well as construct the subject line, and send the email to the appropriate users based upon the selection for the where and who fields.

I like the HTML form idea ... that would reduce a lot of my headaches in the future. Now if only I can get approval for a small project based on this :)

Thanks for the suggestions/comments.