kings.uwo.ca

Educational Institution

Since 2014

Higher learning institutions have a wide variety of technical needs, each adding to a looming list of potential problems. David Thuss of King's University College refers to CheckCentral as the canary in the coal mine, a service which alerts him to immediate problems and provides forewarning of larger issues.

When a hydro transformer failed in one of the campus buildings, CheckCentral identified the issue's origin before facilities staff were deployed. When a fibre line was unintentionally cut, CheckCentral notified Thuss that Wi-Fi was down, along with several other Internet-reliant systems. He was then able to recognize the scale of the disruption, noting that CheckCentral reduced both the time for troubleshooting and the time to repair.

Before CheckCentral, Thuss was checking everything manually. Not only was the task tedious, but it was also at risk for human error.

Thuss embraced the full capabilities of the service, incorporating more than just backup monitoring. He uses CheckCentral for server and network monitoring, power supply checks, access point statuses, security system availability, and round-trip email testing.

Streamlining his own workload was Thuss' original intention, but the benefits carried through for everyone involved. Multiple colleagues were receiving notifications before CheckCentral. Using a variety of integrations for software like Slack and Zapier, along with custom privilege settings, now only the necessary people are contacted when an issue arises. For late-hour alerts, Thuss uses a third-party communication software to generate text-to-speech voice calls. No alert goes unnoticed, and no time is wasted.

For Thuss, comprehensive monitoring and efficient notification protocols are integral to CheckCentral's valued service. The informative visual summary is simply an added bonus.

"We were just looking to get rid of things in our inbox and the dashboard was a nice, unexpected feature," Thuss said. "We have it on a screen so at-a-glance we know what's up and what's down."

King's University College has used CheckCentral since 2014, leveraging new features and adapting with expanded capabilities, but Thuss' core need has remained the same: filter countless emails down to only the vital information. Whenever new emails begin to pile up, he revisits what gets sent to the service.

"It's usually an ebb and flow where we do a good job of consolidating, then we get to a point where suddenly we're getting a bunch of noise in our inboxes again and then we add those to CheckCentral."

Problems may always loom, especially for an institution with such diverse demands, but CheckCentral has been a vital component of Thuss' technical arsenal for many years. If and when something goes wrong in the mines, CheckCentral is the reliable canary he trusts to keep him from danger.