Be “Cloud Fail” Resilient
Tip of the Month - August 2024
Like it or not, technology fails, and those points of failure only increase in “the cloud”.
Look at the recent highly visible outages that occurred when security software vendor Cloudstrike pushed a bad update to their software, knocking out millions of computers worldwide. We were mostly unaffected, but our hospital was less fortunate.
Have you ever logged into a web application only to find that it’s been significantly updated overnight without your knowledge, and it’s now broken, or your normal workflow has completely changed or is no longer available?
And what about the Internet? The power? It never goes out, right?
How you will do your business if that application you rely on is unavailable for an hour? A day? Longer?
Here are some tips to make you more resilient in the event of an application outage.
💾 Export Reports and Backups Regularly
If the application offers an easy way to report on all active records in the system, use it! The report may not include all of the details you need, but it may help you answer some questions related to the records while the application is unavailable.
🖨️ Print Out (or Save PDF Copies of) Blank Forms
By having blank forms available, you ensure you can still capture the information you need for later data entry.
📧 Sync Important Details with your Email Application
If the application tracks important meeting dates, sync them with your email calendar. If the application offers email reminders, notifications, and receipts, consider using them. This way, if the application becomes unavailable, you will still have key details, and you won’t miss any important deadlines.
☎️ Keep a Record of Contact Details for Application Support
If you always reach out to application support by clicking a link in the application itself, that won’t do much good if the application is unavailable. Consider keeping the link to the support website as a bookmark in your web browser, and a support number and email as a contact in your address book.
If you are reaching out for help by email, considering some of the tips in this month’s other tip about writing good helpdesk tickets.
📖 Know Alternative Applications that Can Do the Job (if Any)
If the application stores records, it may not be possible to make an easy switch, but if the application just performs a process, can another application perform the process?
If the application edits images, familiarize yourself with another image editor. If the application manipulates PDFs, research another PDF authoring service.
Try to do your research before you’re under the pressure from an outage. AlternativeTo is a great website for doing that research.
Remember that the backup solutions don’t need to be your preferred solutions. They are there to ensure you can continue working while you wait for your preferred one.
📉 Track Application Interruptions that Affect You
If your application has an unreasonable amount of downtime or outages that are affecting your ability to do business, consider finding an alternative that you can better rely on, possibly not in “the cloud”.