Preparing for peak trading, bank holidays and deployment freezes in 2018 – Poq

To ensure that quality and performance remains high regardless of the time of year, below are some key dates and activity to be aware of, and also some guidance on what you can also to do prepare.

UK Bank holidays

Poq does not work on UK bank holidays and will have small deployment and release freezes to ensure that everything is stable and predictable when we are not in the office. We will continue to have 24/7 monitoring and will react to any Poq caused P1 issues during this time but will not have manned support to react to non-critical issues or client caused issues.

Deployment and release freezes

There will be four small deployments and release freezes lined up with UK bank holidays and two slightly longer freezes to cover peak trading over black Friday and Christmas periods. Having deployment freezes will control the risk of any unforeseen issues that may arise after a release and ensure the app runs well when traffic may be high but dedicated resource is low.

Event	2018 Bank holiday dates	Last deployment	Earliest deployment
Easter	Friday 30^th March & Monday 2^nd April	Tuesday 27^th March	Tuesday 3^rd April
Early May bank holiday	Monday 7^th May	Thursday 3^rd May	Tuesday 8^th May
Spring bank holiday	Monday 28^th May	Thursday 24^th May	Tuesday 29^th May
Summer bank holiday	Monday 27^th August	Thursday 23^rd August	Tuesday 28^th August
Black Friday & Cyber Monday (23^rd & 26^th Nov)	Not a UK holiday	Thursday 15^th November	Thursday 29^th November
Christmas & New Year	Tuesday 25^th, Wednesday 26^th December and Tuesday 1^st January	Thursday 20^th December (Dates subject to iTunes connect shut down)	Thursday 3rd January

What can you do?

Align with our freeze times

Often issues arise on the app when changes are made on the client side that links to the app. Please sync up with our freeze dates and don’t make changes to any feed structures, check out URL or any other code or integration that is used for the app’s functionality. If you change anything which goes on to cause an issue while we are in a freeze or over a bank holiday, we won’t be able to resolve it until the earliest deployment day.

Inform us of expected traffic spikes

Please also keep us informed of any sales, marketing campaigns or anything else that is likely to significantly increase traffic. We have auto-scaling set up and also will do manual scaling around Black Friday and Christmas sales, but it always better to be able to predict and prepare. Please complete the “sales tab” on your Support Google sheet and let the Support team know in your catch-ups.

US bank holidays

Unless it is also a UK bank holiday, Poq will be working the contracted hours for US bank holidays.

Event	2018 Dates	Support covered?
Martin Luther King Jr Day	15^th January	Poq is working
Presidents’ Day	19^th February	Poq is working
Memorial Day	28^th May	No Cover - UK Bank Holiday
Independence Day	4^th July	Poq is working
Labor Day	3^rd September	Poq is working
Columbus Day	8^th October	Poq is working
Veterans Day	11^th November	Poq is working
Thanksgiving Day	22^nd November	Poq is working
Christmas Day	25^th December	No Cover - UK Bank Holiday

If you have any questions, please contact support@poqcommerce.com