Why University IT systems may be disrupted or change over time

Spanner and tools resting on a laptop keyboard indicating it needs to be fixed. — Many things can affect the availability or quality of University IT systems.

The University has many IT systems and services which support you in your work as a member of staff or as a student.

Sometimes how and when you use these IT systems may be impacted due to:

Planned downtime.
Planned changes.
Unplanned disruption.

Planned downtime

Similarly to the annual MOT on your car, IT systems need regular maintenance to make sure that they continue to work as well as possible.

Planned downtime is usually due to necessary maintenance to:

Improve the security of our systems by patching any security flaws that cyber criminals may try to exploit.
Maintain the stability of the system.
Improve your experience of using the system, such as by adding new features or removing old ones that are no longer necessary.
Create the ability to apply new features or improvements in the future.
Make sure the system continues to be compatible with other University IT systems and equipment.

Planned downtime is often arranged to take place outside of core University hours to help reduce any impact to you, or your work, as much as possible.

Planned changes

To maximise the benefits available from our University IT systems, we may also make planned changes.

Sometimes this may affect your experience of using the system, such as when improvements were implemented on your University Microsoft account.

Unplanned disruption

Sometimes the availability or quality of University IT systems will be affected by factors outside of our control, such as:

Supplier outages or disruption which impact the services available.
Software problems caused by unexpected complexities or interactions between different University systems.
Hardware failures because of cable damage, loose connections or temperature and humidity changes.
Environmental issues such as power or network failures.
The need to urgently fix an unexpected issue.

How we’ll let you know about planned changes or disruption

Depending on the scale, significance, and the time of impact, information about disruption or changes to University IT systems is shared in different ways. Depending on the situation, you may:

See changes to the operational status of systems or news of upcoming maintenance on the University of Bath IT status page.
Receive direct user-group emails about a specific system.
See announcements on the staff and/or student homepages.
Receive information about planned downtime within the weekly IT Announcement email if you have subscribed to the mailing list.

Check the current operating status of University IT systems

University of Bath IT Status page

The University of Bath IT status page, sometimes called Status.Bath, allows you to check if a University IT system is operational (i.e., working as it should) without the need to contact the IT Service desk directly.

The University of Bath IT Status page shows:

The status of each system in terms of its operational status, and any unavailability or service degradation.
Information about historic and current periods of disruption (known collectively as incidents), including downtime due to maintenance.
Upcoming planned downtime and maintenance.

You can either see an overview by scrolling down the list on the main page, or navigate to specific types of information by using the tabs. Click on the system name for more information.

What to do if you need further help and support

If you need further help and support in relation to planned or unplanned IT service, please contact the IT Service Desk.

Find out about the status of University IT systems

Understand why our IT systems may be disrupted or change over time, how you can check their current operating status, and what to do if you need help.