NLA Office eMail Outage

We are currently experiencing an outage at our ISP that has caused us to lose all internet access from our London office.

This DOES NOT affect eClips in any way, it only means that any requests sent to us via email may not be actioned as quickly as you would normally expect.

If you have any questions or need anything, please call 020 7332 6036 and we will do everything we can to help.

Thanks for your patience. 

Evening Standard Delivery Delay

Problem:

The following content has not been delivered to the NLA for production into eClips:

• Evening Standard (publication date 16.07.07)

Cause:

Associated Newspapers has informed the NLA that they are experiencing a significant IT failure which is affecting delivery of content to all 'downstream' clients. 

Solution:

The NLA production staff are working closely with Associated to ensure that this issue is resolved as quickly as possible.   Further updates will be sent when more information is available.

Update on Monday, July 16, 2007 at 12:26 by Matt Groshong

Associated Newspapers has resolved their IT issue and all pages of the Evening Standard have now been processed and are available in eClips.

We apologise for any impact this may have had on your clients.

Emergency Maintenance - Sunday July 15th

Due do emergency maintenance at our hosting centre, the eClips system will be unavailable from 5-15 minutes at two points on Sunday night.

The first outage will occur at 00:10 and the second will be at 06:15.

We do not expect either of these outages to have a negative impact on our nightly production.

The both the FTP service and the ability to view cuttings will be impacted - but only for the duration of the outage.

Based on usage trends for the past year, we expect the impact to end-users to be minimal.

We have sent email notifications to all of the PCA production contacts today, and will send a reminder email on Sunday evening at the start of the production run. If you experience any problems outside these times, please call the support number as usual.

Please feel free to contact Client Services with any questions.

Enjoy your weekend!

News International Non-delivery of Sunday's Content

Problem:

We experienced a Publisher Delivery Failure of a substantial number of books from The Sunday Times. Most of the content was recovered during the production run, but we are still attempting to recover some of the content. The books still missing are:

• Sport
• In Gear
• Appointments (Scot)
• Ecosse (Scot)
• Home (Scot)
• In Gear (Scot)
• News Review (Scot)
• Sport (Scot)

Cause:

The failure was due to an error in the publisher's FTP server.

Solution:

We work very hard with the publishers to try and reduce as many potential stumbling blocks as we can, but some things are out of our control. Our production team has been in contact with News International this morning and has been assured that NI will do their best to ensure this type of failure will not happen again.

KPI Reporting:

The Sunday Times has been removed from the monthly KPI calculations for Sunday 8th July in accordance with Section 3.2.2 of Appendix 2 of the eClips Licence.

NLA PCA Licence Excerpt:

SERVICE LEVEL SUSPENSIONS

The NLA shall not be responsible for a failure to meet any Service Level to the extent that such failure is attributable to any of the following events ("Service Level Suspensions") provided in each case that the NLA shall at all times use reasonable endeavours to meet the Service Levels and shall notify the Licensee of the occurrence of these events:

3.1 Scheduled Maintenance (except that overruns from the notified or agreed downtime period will be taken into account when measuring performance against the relevant Service Levels);

3.2 any Unavailability resulting from

3.2.1 the acts or omissions of the Licensee’s local loop provider or any national or international telecoms circuit provider;

3.2.2 the acts or omissions of a Publisher (provided always that the NLA can demonstrate it has followed such escalation procedures as may be in existence with the relevant Publisher);

3.2.3 the Licensee's applications, equipment, network or facilities;

3.2.4 the acts, omissions or wilful misconduct of the Licensee, its agents and/or employees or any Permitted User;

3.2.5 reasons of Force Majeure;

3.2.6 failure attributable to the Licensee;

3.2.6.1 not authorising software upgrades required to maintain Availability. For the avoidance of doubt the scope of any software upgrades that the NLA can require the Licensee to undertake shall not require the Licensee to change its hardware

or software operating system;

3.2.6.2 failing to install new software releases provided by the NLA free

of charge; and

3.2.7 the Licensee instructing the NLA not to work on a fault or failing to notify the NLA of a fault which has come to the Licensee's attention.

Late Delivery of Files for Monday, 11th June

Problem:

We experienced a problem writing files into client FTP folders early this morning resulting in the late delivery of a substantial number of first edition files.

Delivery statistics show completion percentages for core repertoire first edition files were

• 4.46% at 01:00
• 15.52% at 01:30
• 99.95% at 02:00

Cause:

The failure was due to an incorrectly cut list from the Guardian that should not have been included in the feed in the first place.

This file caused a failure in our file distribution software. 

Solution:

We removed the offending object from the database, and following a restart of the software, the logs indicated that everything was normal. Files were again being distributed normally.

Unfortunately, there were about 4000 XML files and about 5000 IDS and XML objects waiting to be distributed. This was occurring extremely slowly due to all the loading which was going on at the same time. We therefore stopped loading files for 30 mins while the number of files awaiting distribution decreased.

Changes:

This was essentially human error and we are currently evaluating what options we have to ensure this type of failure won't happen again. We will update this entry as soon as we have a satisfactory solution.

NLA PCA Licence Excerpt:

7.5 Following expiry of the Transitional Period, in the event of Delayed Delivery you may as an interim measure for a maximum period of 24 hours from the target delivery times set out in the Service Level Schedule exercise the rights granted to you under a subsisting Electronic Licence to subject the Cuttings affected by Delayed Delivery to Text and/or Image Scanning and deliver them pursuant to the rights granted to you under an Electronic Licence provided always that the following conditions are met:

7.5.1 where the affected Cuttings derive from publications forming part of your Database Repertoire and the Electronic Repertoire, you must notify us in writing (email being sufficient for these purposes) within 12 hours of the relevant target delivery time set out in the Service Level Schedule, specifying the title and pages of the affected Cuttings that you have subjected to Text and/or Image Scanning under this clause 7.5; and

7.5.2 where the affected Cuttings derive from News International Publications, as these publications form part of your Database Repertoire but not part of the Electronic Repertoire, you must notify us in writing (email being sufficient for these purposes) before exercising the rights under this clause 7.5 specifying the title and pages of the affected Cuttings that you intend to subject to Text and/or Image Scanning; and by no later than the last day of the Viewing Period, delete from all systems and records which you own or which are under your control the images comprising those Cuttings which you subjected to Text and/or Image Scanning under this clause 7.5, and delete the associated text no later than the end of the Archive Period.