Maintenance windows and freezes
A maintenance window is an agreed, repeating time when planned changes to a service may happen: “Tuesdays and Thursdays 16:00–22:00 in Norway”. A freeze is a period when no changes may happen, even inside those windows: the weeks around Christmas, year-end closing, a customer's launch. Both are part of Change Management: a Change Manager keeps them under Change Management → Settings, on the Maintenance windows and Freezes tabs, and everyone who reads changes sees them on the change calendar.
Schedule → Services that pick it → Change planned → Fits a window?
Freeze → Schedules it takes precedence over → Change planned
Change planned → Approval rules: in a freeze, or outside the windows
Schedules
You define a schedule once, and pick it on the services it is for. Changing a schedule changes every service using it, and the audit log keeps what it was before and after.
| Part | What it says |
|---|---|
| Name | Say where or what it is for: “Norway weeknights”, “London patching”. Names are unique in the organization. |
| Time zone | The windows are in this time zone, also across daylight saving. |
| Windows | One or more, of the kinds below. A window may run past midnight. |
| Description | Optional: where it was agreed, such as the accounts' contracts. |
| Kind | Example |
|---|---|
| Every week | Tuesdays and Thursdays 16:00 for 6 hours. |
| Once a month | The second Tuesday of the month 22:00 for 4 hours; or the first to fourth, or the last, of any weekday. |
| Once a month, days after | 2 days after the second Tuesday of the month 18:00 for 4 hours: the Thursday after Patch Tuesday, which isn't always the second Thursday. |
| On a date | 2026-12-27 08:00 for 8 hours, for a one-off maintenance day. |
While you edit, the dialog shows the next windows, so you can check that the rule is the one you meant.
On a service. Pick its schedules when you add it (Maintenance windows on the service's form), or later on its Maintenance windows tab. A service can have several; a change may be planned in any of them. A service with none may be changed at any time outside freezes. The service's history records which schedules it has.
An archived schedule stays on the services that have it, and still counts for them, but can't be picked for others.
On an account. An account may have agreed with you when changes to its services happen: its agreed maintenance
windows. Pick them on the account's page, under Agreed maintenance windows, from the same schedules (often one
made for that account, such as “Acme Thursday evenings”). The card shows the next windows of each. Changing them
needs Change accounts (account.write), since they are part of what was agreed with the account; the audit log
keeps each change. An account with none has agreed to nothing extra: only its services' windows count.
Freezes
A freeze can be added at any time. It has a name, a reason, a start and an end (date and time), and says which maintenance windows it takes precedence over:
- Picked maintenance windows: the services using those schedules are frozen. A freeze on “Norway weeknights” blocks changes in Norway and leaves London's services alone.
- Every service: every service in the organization, also those without schedules.
A change planned so that it overlaps a freeze on one of its services is in a freeze, even if it is inside a maintenance window. Emergency changes are exempt.
What a change must fit
When a change is planned, Change Management checks every service it affects and every account it affects (the Customers affected on the change):
| The change is | When | What then |
|---|---|---|
| Inside the windows | It fits wholly in one window of one of the service's schedules, or the service has none. | Nothing more is asked. |
| Outside the windows | It doesn't fit any window of the service's schedules, or of an affected account's agreed windows. | The requester says why, and an approval rule may ask one more approval. An account's shows as “Acme (agreed)”, and a rule for some units covers it when one of the change's services is in them. |
| In a freeze | It overlaps a freeze on the service's schedules, or on every service. | Only with an approval rule that lets it through; otherwise refused. |
The next common window
When the planned time doesn't fit every window, or is in a freeze, the change's Window says when it next would: Next common window, the soonest time of the same length that fits a window of every service and every affected account and no freeze on them, within the next 120 days. It is shown in your time zone and in the windows' own (“Thu 24 Dec 22:00–23:00 Oslo”). Use it moves the change there, as editing the window would.
On the change calendar
Calendar, under Changes in the menu, shows the next four weeks day by day. Next to the changes planned, turn on Maintenance windows to see when the schedules' windows are (in your own time zone, with one schedule or all of them), and Freezes to see the days that are frozen. Your browser remembers what you turned on.
Who may do what
| To | You need |
|---|---|
| See schedules and freezes | Access to the organization: on the change calendar and on each service's tab. |
| Add, change and archive schedules | change.settings for the whole organization (Change Manager). |
| Add, change and remove freezes | change.settings for the whole organization (Change Manager). |
| Pick a service's schedules | The right to edit the service (its owner, or service.write). |
| Pick an account's agreed windows | account.write for the organization. |
Schedules and freezes stay in their organization: nothing is shared with another.