Hello fellow Docebo admins.
What is your approach to making your platform unavailable whilst large scale changes are in progress?
I need to prevent user logins (except mine!) for a day whilst we switch over all users to a new IDP and rebrand everything.
Best,
Marion
Best answer by jasminekkochar
We’re a lot lazier than that.
We put up a message on the public custom page/landing page.
And then use CSS to hide the sign-in dialog and sign-in/register buttons.
It’s easy (though a little annoying) for those in the know to use the inspect tool to unhide and get back in, but most/all of our users wouldn’t know how/think to do that.
It’s not the smartest or most elegant way, but it’s super fast to do/undo.
+2One option is to make all accounts inactive en masse. However, I would run a report with all users and their current statuses so that you can keep the ones previously marked inactive when turning everyone back to an active state.
+13Is your platform behind your firewall? Consider that you maybe able to do a redirect to an html page for that downtime (with a little coordination with your IT team).
We’re a lot lazier than that.
We put up a message on the public custom page/landing page.
And then use CSS to hide the sign-in dialog and sign-in/register buttons.
It’s easy (though a little annoying) for those in the know to use the inspect tool to unhide and get back in, but most/all of our users wouldn’t know how/think to do that.
It’s not the smartest or most elegant way, but it’s super fast to do/undo.
+13We’re a lot lazier than that.
We put up a message on the public custom page/landing page.
And then use CSS to hide the sign-in dialog and sign-in/register buttons.
It’s easy (though a little annoying) for those in the know to use the inspect tool to unhide and get back in, but most/all of our users wouldn’t know how/think to do that.
It’s not the smartest or most elegant way, but it’s super fast to do/undo.
Me likey lazy. Thank you for this.
I agree with JZenker’s idea, except I would download a list of only active users, including the username and “Status” columns. Change 1 to 0 in the Status column for everyone and re-upload. Then change 0 back to 1 and re-upload when you’re ready to make the platform available again.
+2We’re a lot lazier than that.
We put up a message on the public custom page/landing page.
And then use CSS to hide the sign-in dialog and sign-in/register buttons.
It’s easy (though a little annoying) for those in the know to use the inspect tool to unhide and get back in, but most/all of our users wouldn’t know how/think to do that.
It’s not the smartest or most elegant way, but it’s super fast to do/undo.
Unique idea, I like that!
Does this have to be done during normal business hours? I hate to suggest this, but could this work be done after “normal” business hours (assuming they exist and it's not 24-hour necessary access) or dont hate me for saying it, over a weekend date? (please put the pitchforks and torches down it's only a thought :) )
Wow some really great ideas here. Thank you!
We’re a global corporation so normal business hours is 24/7/365, else I’d 100% do it after hours!
I love the lazy idea, as the change will already be editing everyone’s accounts, i’m not sure i want two rounds of editing the full user database.
Thank you all so much!
Marion
Hey we’ve just fully rebranded the platform to our new company (we didn’t require a change of IDP though).
All pages can be duplicated and rebranded in preparation, rebranded and activated on switchover day (including the login page and added to existing menus with other pages then turned off. We had no issues doing this during working hours there would just be a difference in look for users during switchover. Certain areas could only be rebranded on switchover day but did all this successfully with over 11,000 users on the platform.
Notifications can also be duplicated and tested prior to becoming active with old ones deactivated on the day and removed when ready.
Rebranded courses were versioned on the day too but with prior notice being sent out to users.
Not sure if this helps for your use case. Good luck with your changes.
+1Hey we’ve just fully rebranded the platform to our new company (we didn’t require a change of IDP though).
All pages can be duplicated and rebranded in preparation, rebranded and activated on switchover day (including the login page and added to existing menus with other pages then turned off. We had no issues doing this during working hours there would just be a difference in look for users during switchover. Certain areas could only be rebranded on switchover day but did all this successfully with over 11,000 users on the platform.
Notifications can also be duplicated and tested prior to becoming active with old ones deactivated on the day and removed when ready.
Rebranded courses were versioned on the day too but with prior notice being sent out to users.
Not sure if this helps for your use case. Good luck with your changes.
I agree with this approach and we do the same!
We have an alert system that broadcasts to every employee that lets them know planned outages.
For internal and external users, we post the notice on the portal page that the system is unavailable when we take it off-line and when it will be back.
We also have a separate Maintenance page that is in the top spot everyone’s menu that states the system is unavailable. We keep it unpublished until we need it to take over.
This combination has got us through real-time problem solving, though I try to find a time with the least number of users to do my updates. However, not all updates happen at “the best time”.
Yes, we follow the lazy option too and it works except there are always some tech savvy users who, instead of clicking on SSO (the normal entry to the LMS) they enter the email and password.
Just asking here, slightly different bend in the question. Has anyone able to successfully only have their system ‘open’ during business hours? I would like to close access to the LMS after the hours of 8am - 6pm to prevent users completing training after hours and then being paid penalty rates.
+7…We also have a separate Maintenance page that is in the top spot everyone’s menu that states the system is unavailable. We keep it unpublished until we need it to take over…
There are lots of great ideas in this thread I may steal in the future. With that said, ^ this recommendation from Trisha (or a version of it) is the only solution I’ve ever used and it’s worked perfectly for me every time…
Here’s my process:
This ensures all user can still log in, but restricts them from accessing any pages other than the one you want them to see
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