13 Scheduled Maintenance Message Examples and Templates

In this article, you will learn about different types of scheduled maintenance messages and tips for writing them.

You will also find examples of maintenance messages and downloadable IT outage templates. Use these templates and best practices to create effective system maintenance notifications that employees actually notice.

Key Takeaways

• A scheduled maintenance message helps notify employees about planned IT or system downtime, so they can plan ahead and avoid interruptions at work.
• Use ready-made templates for email, chat apps, and desktop alerts to quickly send system maintenance updates across multiple channels and make sure everyone sees the message.
• With employee notification tools like DeskAlerts, you can automatically send scheduled maintenance announcements, save time, and track who has read the alerts.

Table of Contents

1. Types of Maintenance Messages

2. Scheduled Maintenance Messages [Templates]

3. Key Elements of an Effective Maintenance Message

4. How to Make Sure People Actually See Your Maintenance Messages

5. Case Study: How an Organization Improved System Maintenance Communication

Types of Maintenance Messages: Scheduled And Unplanned

Scheduled Maintenance

A scheduled maintenance message notifies users of upcoming work that may temporarily affect service availability. This allows users to prepare in advance and take the necessary steps.

Emergency Maintenance

An emergency maintenance message informs users of sudden problems that require immediate resolution. Typically, these messages include information about the nature of the problem and an estimated time to restore the system.

Maintenance Completion Message

This notification informs users that maintenance work has been completed and services are available again. It may also contain information about changes or improvements that have been made.

Warning of Possible Failures

This message warns users of possible service disruptions due to ongoing maintenance. It is important so that users can take this into account in their work.

Progress Update

These messages provide users with up-to-date information on the progress of maintenance, including changes to plans, extensions to work or early completion.

These types of messages help maintain transparent and effective communication with users during maintenance work.

Examples of Scheduled Maintenance Messages

Here are some scheduled maintenance message examples you can send by email, pop-up, scrolling ticker, SMS, and other channels.

Use these system maintenance notification samples to create messages and alerts for your business needs.

For example, you can use the website under maintenance email template or server downtime email sample in advance to be ready to send them in 2 seconds when it is time.

Keeping your employees informed about scheduled maintenance will help them plan and ease their frustrations, particularly when you show you understand their impact on them. See more message examples in the downloadable template below.

9 Ready-to-Send IT Outage Messages

Customize and send these messages instantly to ensure your organization stays informed and confident during IT disruptions.

Key Elements of an Effective Maintenance Message

Using templates helps save time, but knowing the principles these example messages are based on will give you more flexibility and scalability in the future. Here are key elements that system admins and IT managers often mention in dedicated forum threads and polls:

1. A simple and clear headline

The headline should clearly capture the essence of the message, such as "Scheduled Maintenance" or "Emergency System Upgrade". This helps users immediately understand what the message is about.

"Key detail in subject line. Make it clear there's an outage. Make it clear what service will be hit by the outage."

— one of the users in the r/sysadmin thread on Reddit.

2. Date and time of the work

Specify the exact start and end time of the maintenance, including the time zone. This allows users to plan their work around system downtime, which also has a positive impact on business operations.

3. Description of the work

Briefly describe exactly what work will be performed and how it may affect service availability. For example, the system will be unavailable during this time or there may be brief outages.

"List systems or services affected early in the email, to make it easy for people to tell if it's relevant to them."

— one of the users in the r/sysadmin thread on Reddit.

4. Impact on users

State which specific services or features will be unavailable and how this may affect users. This is important so that they can prepare for possible inconvenience.

5. Contact Information

Provide contact information for contacting support in case of questions or issues. This can be an email address, phone number, or a link to a support chat room.

6. Recommendations for users

Give users recommendations on what to do during maintenance. For example, "save all data before starting the work" or "avoid using the system at the specified times".

7. Information about completing the work

Specify that users will be notified when the maintenance is complete and the system is back online. This will help maintain their confidence and reduce support calls.

8. Progress updates

If work is delayed or unexpected difficulties arise, it's important to promptly inform users of changes to the schedule and provide updates as they progress.

How to Make Sure People Actually See Your Maintenance Messages: Best Practices

Most IT teams we talk with don’t struggle much with writing maintenance messages — you can simply use templates for that. Although clear texts do help to convey the message, if people haven't seen the notice in the first place, there's little even the most perfect text can do.

Imagine a situation:

An IT team at a large manufacturing company sent a planned maintenance notice about system X by email only. The message was clear and sent two days in advance. However, more than half of the company's shift-based employees never saw it because they weren’t at their desks when the email arrived. Besides, many had mobile notifications turned off.

When the system went offline, the helpdesk was flooded with tickets and calls asking why system X wasn’t working. The outage itself lasted 45 minutes, while the confusion and ticket cleanup lasted the entire afternoon.

That’s why strong maintenance communication is always a mix of clear messaging, the right timing, AND using channels employees actually pay attention to.

Match the Message Format to the Urgency

Not every maintenance window requires the same level of visibility. Choose the right channel, and it will prevent unnecessary disruption while also ensuring people don’t miss critical updates.

Routine, low-impact maintenance?

An email and an intranet post are usually enough. These channels are non-intrusive and work well when downtime won’t affect everyone.

Medium-impact or time-sensitive planned maintenance?

Send the message through a chat, for example, Teams or Slack. You can also use desktop scrolling tickers if you need lightweight reminders that stay visible without interrupting employees’ work.

Note: Desktop pop-up alerts differ from scrolling tickers.

Pop-ups appear instantly on top of all windows and are designed for high visibility, while scrolling tickers stay at the edge of the screen and work well for subtle reminders. Screensavers, lockscreen messages, and wallpapers are also helpful here if you need repeated passive reminders over several days.

High-impact and critical maintenance affecting core systems?

Don't rely on a single channel. A multi-channel approach is the safest way to reach users regardless of whether they’re at their desks, on factory floors, traveling, or working from home.

For example, you can send the main announcement by email, reinforce it with a reminder in Teams or Slack, and use a desktop pop-up for the final notification. Unlike previous scenarios where desktop alerts were optional, here they become a must.

Pop-up alerts that appear over other applications and can request acknowledgment (so that you know for sure who saw the message) will help you make the notification truly impossible to miss.

Send Reminders at the Right Cadence

Employees are likely to see a maintenance message once, think 'Okay, noted', and forget about it minutes later. Not necessarily employee negligence, just information overload.

To avoid confusion and helpdesk ticket spikes, reminders help reinforce the timeline without overwhelming the audience. Different reminders work best through different channels:

• 3–5 days before — send an email or an intranet post to help people plan their work.
• On the day — send a chat reminder or a desktop scrolling ticker.
• 10–30 minutes to the planned maintenance — send a more visible reminder, such as a desktop pop-up alert.

This layered approach ensures employees get the right amount of visibility at the right time.

"Depending on the severity of the outage, I'll try to give 2 weeks' notice for the first notification, a follow-up 2-3 days before the outage, and then a final reminder the day of, concluding with an 'all clear' email when service has been restored."

— one of the users in the r/sysadmin thread on Reddit.

Target the Message to the Right Groups

Sending everything to everyone is ineffective (Source: UK Government Communication Service). People mentally tune out messages that don’t feel relevant to them, which is exactly how important updates get missed.

Segment your audience by:

• department
• role
• region or time zone
• custom groups based on system access or job function.

This ensures people receive only what affects them and prevents alert fatigue, especially in distributed organizations.

Example:

A global retailer used to send maintenance announcements to the entire company. As a result, staff in Europe received notices meant for North American systems, and store employees got updates they couldn’t act on because they only applied to office VPN users. When the communication team saw the low engagement metrics, they couldn't understand if the affected audience had seen the message.

Once communications were targeted by groups, the open rate for IT alerts increased, and message fatigue dropped.

Be Clear About the Impact and Timeline

Employees don’t need long explanations. They need answers to four predictable questions that we covered in the "Key Elements of an Effective Maintenance Message" earlier. Here they are if you skipped that section:

1. What system is being updated?
2. What exactly won’t be available?
3. When does it start and end?
4. Who can they contact if something goes wrong?

Clear communication is especially important when you use multiple channels, since the message needs to be consistent across all of them.

Example:

A university’s IT team once announced "database maintenance" without specifying that it affected the student portal. Thousands of students saw the message, but when they logged into the portal (and it didn't work), they didn't connect that message with the broken portal and reported the issue.

As a result, the helpdesk was overwhelmed for hours with tickets — all because the impact wasn’t stated explicitly in the first place.

Follow Up After the Maintenance Window

Keep the employees updated on the progress.

Send a short notice to confirm and highlight:

• All systems are back online.
• Any actions users need to take (e.g., clear the cache or restart the app).
• Whom to contact if issues persist.

For high-impact systems, using a visible channel, such as a desktop pop-up alert, can ensure everyone sees the update. In companies with compliance or audit needs, acknowledgment tracking makes it easy to confirm who received the message and export the report.

Case Study: How Improved IT Communication Helped Preserve Data and Money

Weizmann Institute of Science is one of the world’s largest multidisciplinary basic research institutions in the fields of natural and exact sciences.

They struggled to inform staff about IT upgrades, with lots of systems to maintain.

Weizmann Institute decided to implement an employee notification system as a solution to send highly visible alerts about maintenance, outages, and server downtime to all employees in seconds. They also benefited from the tool's acknowledgement feature – it was crucial for the institute to see who received and read the messages.

Read more about their experience.

Make Your IT Communication Actually Work

Message templates help you communicate clearly. But how and when you deliver them determines whether employees actually see the information and act on it. Using a multi-channel, automated approach helps IT teams avoid confusion, prevent service desk overload, and keep maintenance windows running.

If you’d like to see how scheduled maintenance communication works inside an employee notification system → explore IT Outage Communication Solutions.

FAQ:

What is a maintenance message?

Maintenance messages are communications that inform users about the temporary unavailability of systems, websites, or other services that they use because of updates or other maintenance. These messages keep users informed about the status of the service or system and the expected duration of the outage.

What is a maintenance notification?

A maintenance notification is a message sent to users of a system to inform them about upcoming or ongoing maintenance. It should include the date and time of the maintenance, the affected systems, and any steps that users need to take to prepare or avoid disruptions.

How do you write a maintenance message?

When writing a maintenance message, be concise, clear, and informative. Include the information that your employees need to plan their work:

What – Explain what system or service will be affected.

When – State the date and time of the scheduled maintenance.

How long – Mention how long the downtime will last.

Why (optional but recommended) – Briefly explain the reason, if helpful (e.g., upgrades or improvements).

What to do – Let employees know if they need to take any action.

Contact – Provide support contact information in case of questions.

What are examples of scheduled maintenance?

There are different types of scheduled maintenance that are carried out to ensure ongoing system stability. Scheduled maintenance examples include:

• Regular software updates
• Patches to fix known critical bugs
• Routine checks of hardware and other infrastructure
• Upgrades of hardware and other infrastructure
• Scheduled backups of data and files to prevent the loss of critical information.

What is an example of a routine maintenance notice?

Here's an example of a routine server maintenance email:

What are three maintenance examples?

There are three main types of maintenance that affect systems and system users. These are:

• Preventative maintenance: work that is carried out to prevent issues from occurring, such as upgrades to old equipment.
• Corrective maintenance: work that is carried out when an issue is identified and needs to be fixed.
• Predetermined maintenance; this is work that is carried out on a schedule outside of the organization’s control, such as mandatory software updates released by a software vendor.

How do you write a scheduled maintenance email?

To write a scheduled maintenance announcement email, follow these steps:

• State the purpose of the email, which is to inform users about upcoming maintenance.
• Provide details about the maintenance, such as the date and time, the affected systems, and any steps that users need to take to prepare or avoid disruptions.
• Thank users for their understanding.
• Include contact information for further questions.

How do you write a maintenance notice?

Step #1. Identify the purpose of the notice

Is it to inform users about upcoming maintenance? Is it to notify them of an outage?

Step #2. Determine the audience for the notice

Who needs to know about the maintenance?

Step #3. Gather the necessary information

What date and time will the maintenance take place? Which systems will be affected?

Step #4. Write the notice in a clear and concise way

Use plain language and avoid jargon. Proofread the notice carefully before sending it out. Send the notice to the appropriate people.

What is an example of scheduled maintenance?

Scheduled maintenance examples common in business is when a company schedules regular maintenance on its servers and other equipment. This helps to ensure that the equipment is running properly and that there are no unexpected outages. Scheduled maintenance can also help to identify and fix potential problems before they cause an outage.

What is the subject line for scheduled maintenance?

The best subject line for a scheduled maintenance notice should be clear and concise and present information upfront to the reader. Examples include:

• Scheduled Maintenance on Date
• Upcoming Maintenance on Date
• System Maintenance Notice