We’re all familiar with those bothersome system update notifications that pop up with relentless consistency. I don’t care how many cameras you’re managing, no normal human can reasonably pause their life every single day to do system updates.
DISMISS.
Shoutout to all of you XProtect Admins managing large VMSs with multiple servers that require updates to be performed in a rolling fashion with groups of servers distributed throughout weekly maintenance windows. We see you.
So when “Patch Tuesday” comes around every month and Microsoft is lurking around like a bad boss with an MBA in Micromanaging, we reluctantly comply.
We reassure ourselves that the critical bug and cyber security vulnerability fixes are worth the inevitable flood of alert emails that will ensue from The Boring Toolbox if this particular update requires a server reboot or to temporarily take down cameras or servers across our VMS.
Email fatigue is real, people.
And while these email alerts are a correct response to your recording server going down and tell you that your Boring Toolbox is working exactly how it should be, us Boring people acknowledge that they are still annoying to all of the administrators and the team subscribed to the live monitoring notifications.
Perhaps the fact that they are “false alerts” aka “false positives” may even make them more annoying.
But luckily, deleting dozens of emails is boring, and we’re experts at solving boring problems.
In staying true to our mission to “save Milestone Administrators time,” we recognize that spending even 5 minutes deleting emails, is about 4 minutes and 55 seconds too long
Which is exactly why we took a long, hard look at our email notifications and vowed to solve this boring problem.
And so the story goes, we began devising a masterplan for world domination creating system updates of our own.
The first release in a series of updates to The Boring Toolbox that will revolutionize the way Milestone Admins receive system health alerts for their VMS like no one has seen before.
With Maintenance mode, you can mute all notifications for a selection of cameras or recording servers and remove those devices from the live monitoring dashboard, thereby eliminating any unwanted alerts.
You can schedule recurring maintenance modes for entire servers up to twice a week, for up to one full calendar day at a time.
If you need more time, then Maintenance mode can be enabled manually on individual devices or entire recording servers.
Picture this…
you’re performing a Windows update on a few recording servers, but don’t want to annoy your other team members with an abundance of noisy alerts in their inbox.
With our new functionality, Admins can now set up multiple Maintenance Mode schedules so that when it’s time to perform updates, their team members won’t get flooded with notifications.
We get how stressful a flooded inbox can be for a VMS administrator, and our goal is to make sure none of our customers ever have to set up a custom filter for our emails.
With Maintenance mode, you can now block out the noise and find more valuable information in each and every notification you get from us.
Select one or many cameras or recording servers and enable Maintenance Mode. It’s that easy.
Create a schedule with a simple wizard which allows you to set a start and end time.
Existing Customer?
Get started using Maintenance mode today by upgrading to the latest version of The Boring Toolbox.
New to The Boring Toolbox?
Try Maintenance Mode for FREE today with The Boring Toolbox 30-Day Free Trial.
Your go-to XProtect eXPerts. We learn the technical stuff that will save you time and make it less boring.
Your go-to XProtect eXPerts. We learn the technical stuff that will save you time and make it less boring.
Getting Started with The Boring Toolbox #3: Learn about the various health monitoring insights and features you will find on…
Getting Started #2: Learn how to configure your parent and managed sites as well as connect Boring to Milestone XProtect…
Getting Started #1: This tutorial will teach you how to install The Boring Toolbox on your server and client.
Subscribe to get a monthly dose of security & surveillance industry news and insights, Milestone VMS time-saving tricks, tips for hacking your way out of boring work sent directly to your inbox!
