## When Automation Should Stop
Scheduling bandwidth changes is the point of a tool like Apptifi, right up until it isn't. During a maintenance window or a year-end change freeze, the last thing you want is a circuit changing tier on its own, even if the change is routine.
Turning a schedule off and rebuilding it later is the wrong fix. It's easy to forget, and it leaves no record of why changes stopped. A better approach is to keep the schedule and pause it for a defined window.
In Apptifi that's a blackout window: a period when bandwidth scheduling is suppressed.
Decide the Scope First
The first question is how much needs to stop. Most freezes don't need to cover everything.
| Situation | Scope |
|---|---|
| Year-end or holiday change freeze | All circuits |
| Recurring maintenance on a set of sites | One circuit group |
| Power or facility work at one location | One circuit |
Keeping the scope narrow means the rest of your schedule keeps running. If you pause by site often, circuit groups make this much easier, because one window can cover every site in the group.
Set Up the Window
Creating a blackout window takes four decisions:
- • Label: write why changes are paused. Anyone reading the audit log later should understand it without asking you.
- • Scope: leave it blank for all circuits, or pick a circuit group or a single circuit.
- • Start and end: set both the date and the time. Windows are interpreted in your customer time zone.
- • Repeat weekly: tick this for a window that recurs on the same day and at the same times, such as Sunday maintenance.
Check Your Tiers Before It Starts
This is the step people miss. A blackout stops changes, so a circuit stays on whatever tier it's on when the window begins. Lumen bills by the tier you've ordered, so a long freeze that starts while a circuit is at its peak tier keeps billing at that tier.
Before a long window, check where each affected circuit will be when it starts. If you'd rather sit out a two-week holiday freeze at a lower tier, make sure the circuit gets there before the window opens. You can model the difference with the IoD savings calculator.
Keep the Record
While a blackout is active, any change the scheduler would have made is skipped, and the skip is recorded in the scheduler audit log. That matters for two reasons: you can show exactly what didn't happen during a freeze, and you can confirm your circuits are where you expect them to be once it ends.
A clear label pays off here. "Q4 change freeze" tells the next person far more than "pause".
A Simple Checklist
- • Confirm the freeze dates with whoever owns the change calendar.
- • Choose the narrowest scope that covers the work.
- • Check each circuit's tier before the window starts.
- • Use a label that explains why.
- • Review the audit log when the window ends.
For the wider picture, see IoD scheduling best practices.