It's back but.......
for how long? Shockingly poor that the whole web site was down for so long with unplanned maintence. Must have been some failure?
peedee
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You aren't really surprised now, are you?
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equally bad is no mention why or maybe even an apology?
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Well I was expecting something really special when we became live again
but haven't found anything special yet 
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Copy of Danielle's post in "Club Products & Services":
Hi everyone
Yesterday morning at around 10.10am we experienced a technical issue with one of our website databases. The rebuilding of the database has taken longer than expected, meaning that the website was completely unavailable until being restored today.
We’d like to reassure you that the database held website content only, so did not affect the transactional areas of the site. Any bookings made yesterday before 10.10am are not affected, and you can see details of these as normal by logging in to the website
and visiting the My Profile area.We are very sorry for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience while our teams work hard to restore the website. We expect full website functionality to be restored later this morning.
Thanks
Danielle
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thanks all, why didn't I think to look on there first rather than the CT main page?
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thanks all, why didn't I think to look on there first rather than the CT main page?
Maybe you used common sense and thought Club Together Help & Feedback was such an obvious place for it to be posted that it couldn't possibly be anywhere else?
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Hi all, Please see website outage discussion by Danielle here for more information, - http://www.caravanclub.co.uk/community/discussions/club-talk/club-products-services/Mondays-website-outage/rt/1475983/
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Kevin from IT gets his revenge after you all complained about him having the weekend off on the CL section the other week.
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JW, thankyou for reconsidering the future of this thread.
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Well site back up and running as fast as it has ever been, but to be fair that has never been one of my complaints, just want it to work consistantly with fewer outages or blank pages. if you look on the other thread you will see i am having a problem explaining
to AD why it is an issue!!0 -
I was a bit miffed to see it closed but I did post without first observing Daniel's apologies.
I still find it very supprising that the web site which the Club and members must be becoming more dependant on was out for so long. As has been asked, in Daniel's thread where were the backups?peedee
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It does seem slow tonight, as Simon said. Still getting steam up, perhaps?
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To be fair to the CC how many other sites that you use, probably go down for a similar length of time, but you never realise. The only reason we notice with the Caravan Club web site is because of CT. If we were only using it for booking sites etc, the chances
are we would never notice.0 -
It's not the only forum I use, Steve, but it's the only one that crashes on a frequent basis.
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From the CC's point of view I would think CT is a bit of a irrelevance but from a business point of view they must be concern with a protracted downtime. Bet the managers of Insurance, Travel and Sites in particular were pretty unhappy.
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as has been said above, more and more of the clubs business relies on its computer system...even with the 'workaround' of taking bookings and lgging interest in insurances over the phone etc, all these 'notes' have to be retrospectively entered once the
system is back up and running.i dont know if this part of the CC operation is outsourced....ie run and managed by some other specialist company or is still run by CC themselves...
having been very involved with outsourcing the IT operations of a 'very' large company, one of the big benefits is the incorporation of all the 'best practice' processes that are being used across the outsourcers portfolio...
not that it reached this point, but Disaster Recovery would be one of these processes that would be developed with a customer as part of that 'scaled up' operation.
however, before outages reach 'disaster' levels (and this is different for each business) they will have to rely on their own ability to recover swiftly and accurately from this sort of 'blip'.
sounds like they did what was required (we're back and all seems to be working......and we hope all the lost data is back in place) but its the blank face of a business thats projected once its customer facing services are removed for any length of time
that can hurt a reputation.good, timely, accurate, understandable, periodic updates (on an banner page) go a long way to salving irate customers' blood pressure....
i realise how difficult it is to predict successful recovery (been there in the middle of the night many, many times) but remember to try and give more info than 'system down, try later'.....
the club is improving in this area, possibly as a response to criticism on this forum, so well done in the recovery....
these things happen in IT, its how well systems are recovered and how well customers are informed that sort the wheat from the chaff....
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Last job I had we had 47k employees worldwide and i would guess that probably a 10th of those could also log on at home. Despite operating over all the worlds timelines and major changes to the system we never had issues with not being able to log on and communicate. I can't remember a single minute of downtime on the system. The oil and gas industry (like many others) is a 24/7 industry that relies on professional people doing a competent job. For a £100 million business the CC ltd appears to be very amateurish in the IT world.
We looked at outsourcing but after due diligence decided there was no benefit to the company and its operations.
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Hello, unfortunately these things have the potential to happen and was down to a technical issue, we're glad the site is back up and everything is a-ok!
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We know these things happen, JW, but they happen frighteningly often here. It's not the forum - that's simply an add on - but the core business must suffer with no website available for bookings etc. If I was Nick Lomas I would be very concerned. Hopefully
the new software will see an improvement.0 -
my assumption (possibly incorrect) was that 'the new software' was for a new CT forum (hence the 'questions' regarding what might be a good bit of functionality to have) not a wholesale junking of the total CC IT services.....?
forum software must be readily available 'off the shelf' most of it with all the 'whistles' most on here (who use other forums) would like to see...
however, moving over to a totally new set of business systems software is another kettle of fish altogether....
these days, companies either remain 'bespoke' in order to retain their 'individuality of services' advantage or move to one of the 'packages' out there which can be configured sufficiently to meet most needs....
ive seen nothing from CC that gives any clue as to which way they are considering moving with their business systems, if at all.
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I think that is one of the problems regarding communicating with members BB. There seems to be something of a cloak of secrecy over most of what is going on, hence the speculation, the frustration at the "new Website" date. Can't quite see why all the mystery
to be quite honest. Clearly, there are a lot of things wrong in one aspect or another, but good honest, informed, regular updates would help keep members on board, and ensure that where needed alternative communication systems can be utilised. Not too much
to ask, especially as we do actually pay a membership to utilise not only the sites, but also the services.0 -
Hi everyone,
Please do rest assured that I hear your concerns, I can understand the lack of clarity around some things may be fustrating, further to my comment on the new site discussion I will absolutely 100% let you and the community know as soon as we hear more on our
side.
As you can imagine these things do take time and I along with the team are working to make sure you have the best Club Together experience possible!0 -
JW, no criticism of you intended at all. It has been going on for a very long time now, and both Ro's kept posting things when they could, as do you!
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i support TTDA's post in that this 'process' has been mooted for an awful long time...
back in the day, like all our other projects, IT ones went through a building process that starts with an overview initial outline, stating rough scope, resources, timings and costs.....
then more meat is put on the bone, getting into detailed user requirements, formal sign off from the business in that 'this' is really what they want.
once agreed, resource and cost estimates firm up, schedules agreed, teams built, detailed technical specs get put together....etc, etc, etc....
all these things happen way before any potential coding (and subsequent build and testing.....) commence....
so.....what i am saying is that, in the normal timetable of IT projects, the basic scope of whats been agreed and is going to be 'built', will have been completed (usually) months, or even years prior to implementation......
which means that, if we are to believe the 'rumble' of Q1 2016 (missed that one....) then the scope was surely known way back, and info to customers should be available.
however, if our IT man is happy to share info 'as soon as he knows more' this suggests that ....
a) they have not been as involved in the development as you would think they should have been
b) CC is just not letting on yet (for whatever reason)
c) CC have been dealing with some 3rd party to purchase (and or develop) the next generation of software and the in house IT team are as in the dark as we are....
d) other....
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Given that the responses are of the "we'll lt you know ASAP" variety, it appears to me that either CC are being deliberately obscurantist or they haven't got a clue when it's going to happen.
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In an average year we spend probably upwards of £1k with the club on membership, Insurance, bookings, Red Pennant etc.. All of this is completed online which I guess is the exactly the same as many other club members. It seems to me therefore that the club
should have a secure, stable, customer focus/user friendly system which is fit for purpose. At the moment that just isn't the case with the downtime and just look how long it took to sort out the spammers!0
