Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

OK, so you might need 34 letters to say "I feel good!" in some circumstances. But I can't ever imagine needing 340 words to say "expect glitches".

A client of mine received this email below from an online service provider. No, you won't want to read it anymore than she did. Want to know the short version? Scroll down.

Salesforce.com is committed to providing a highly available service to our customers. We are committed to continued investments to increase the overall uptime of our service, to deliver optimal value to our customers. With that, we are excited to announce a major advancement in this area for our major releases, effective with our Spring '12 release.
What is the change?
We are happy to inform you that we are improving our major release upgrade process. This improvement means that your organization will be generally available during our major release upgrade windows.
Note: The term "Generally Available" means that we are conducting maintenance on the system that should be seamless to the customer. However, there is the remote possibility that there could be a disruption to service during this time.
When is the Spring '12 major release?
The Spring '12 release for your organization on NA9 is scheduled for:
Friday, February 3, 2012 - Saturday, February 4, 2012
How will this change affect me?
Previously, major release upgrades required up to six (6) hours of maintenance, during which the Salesforce service was unavailable. Effective with Spring '12, your Salesforce service will be generally available during the major release upgrade. Your organization should expect to experience a disruption of up to five (5) minutes during the timeframe listed above. Users will receive an error message informing them that the service is momentarily unavailable while we upgrade it to the latest release, and will be prompted to log back in momentarily. After that time, you will be able to access the Spring '12 release.
Please note: This currently only applies to our major release windows, executed three (3) times per year. System maintenance windows are currently not part of the scope of this change
Where can I go for further information?
This information will also be posted at http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/status/#maint.
We are thrilled to be able to bring these availability improvements to our customers, and look forward to continuing our investment in high availability with you and your business.
Best regards,
salesforce.com Customer Support
Here's my interpretation:
If possible, avoid using the system on Feb 3rd and 4th. If that's not possible, you may see the odd glitch, but don't worry about it.
No wonder people think they're 'not techie'. This isn't 'techie' - this is nonsense. What do you think?

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 18, 2012 at 8:57 AM

    Well, I think that some people like that kind of detail and others don't. From their perspective, they're probably just trying to avoid having to answer a zillion e-mail questions by giving as much info as possible. It's long...but I don't think it's all that bad, really. Probably some version of the last paragraph and your two sentences would have been enough for me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Linda DaleyJanuary 18, 2012 at 9:17 AM

    Anita, you're right of course - my short version wouldn't have sufficed on it's own. A mature, educated, smart adult sent this to me for clarification. I think the message caused a bit of 'overwhelm'. Perhaps a shorter email with a link to more info (for those who want it), would have been better.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Neil EvertonJanuary 18, 2012 at 10:34 AM

    I agree, Linda. We shouldn't have to read something two or three times to figure it out. A message that's overloaded with jargon is either disrespectful of the receipient, or deliberately trying to fudge the content. Thumbs up to the Plain English campaign for leading the fight against gobbledygook.

    ReplyDelete
  4. DanielleJanuary 20, 2012 at 4:22 PM

    I agree! I would have much preferred to receive your interpretation with a link to more information if I was interested.

    ReplyDelete

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