AWS, Microsoft make finding important admin info less frustrating

It's 2023 and tech giants have discovered email and unified dashboards

You might think that the biggest players in the information technology industry might be good at providing their customers with important and timely information, but tragically you would be misguided in that belief. Thankfully, on Wednesday Microsoft and Amazon Web Services both announced fixes to their surprisingly unsophisticated factoid feeds.

Microsoft's effort is an email – bless! – that documents known issues in Windows that were previously documented in the dark recesses of the Windows release health section of the Microsoft 365 admin center.

A reminder: Microsoft runs so many admin portals that in 2021 a sysadmin supergroup launched msportals.io to make finding them all easier. It's not as if Microsoft doesn't know it has a problem with info sprawl: last week it even acknowledged that Microsoft.com is so crowded it needs a new domain – cloud.microsoft – to serve as a portal to its cloudy products.

"This enables you to easily and quickly learn about issues related to Windows updates and make informed decisions about rolling out an update across your environment," wrote Microsoft Windows Servicing and Delivery person Mabel Gomes.

The emails will demand careful attention – when a single known issue affects more than one version of Windows, it will spark only a single message. Gomes says this is a good thing as "there's no need to worry about duplicate emails, even if you sign up for multiple versions."

Amazon's effort is "AWS User Notifications" – billed as "a single place in the AWS console to set up and view AWS notifications across multiple AWS accounts, Regions, and services."

The service lets AWS admins "centrally set up and view notifications from over 100 AWS services" including staples like EC2 and S3. AWS Support case updates are offered "in a consistent, human-friendly format."

Phew. One less thing for AI to conquer.

AWS likes email too: User Notifications lets users send messages in that medium, to chat apps, or as push notifications to the AWS console mobile app, where you can receive these notifications. It's like 2002 has finally arrived.

Yessirree … the future of business IT is turning out to be even more exciting than we ever imagined! ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like