Freelance DBAs: booking planned maintenance windows

Let clients book planned maintenance windows from the off-hours slots you choose: early mornings, late evenings or weekends, each long enough for the work plus a rollback margin, with one place so you never promise the same night to two clients. Agree the scope, the backup and the go/no-go criteria in a short planning call before the window, and keep a separate service for urgent work. Clients get a clear date for their upgrade or migration, and your nights and weekends stay under your control.

A minor patch and a major version upgrade don't need the same window. On Book, each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page, and each slot belongs to one service, sits within one day and has its own capacity. Create one service per window length, and say in the description what kind of work it suits.

Durations and prices are examples: set your own. Each slot sits within one day, so a window that crosses midnight is booked as two slots, one on each date.

Give each window one place. When it's booked, it leaves your page, so two clients can't book the same Saturday night. Slots of different services can overlap, so if you open both a short and a long window on the same night, remove the other once one is booked.

Decide which nights and weekends you're willing to work, and how many per month. Open those as slots a few weeks ahead, rather than every weekend of the year. Slots repeat each week on the weekdays you choose until an end date, which suits a regular early-Sunday window. After a long night, keep the next morning free of calls.

The booking form takes first name, last name, email and phone, plus an optional note that reaches you in the new booking email and appears in the client's calendar file. Ask in the note for the system and the work requested, then agree the details in the planning call:

Keep credentials and connection details out of the booking note, since it appears in the calendar file. Exchange them through a secure channel.

Build time into each window to roll back if something fails. If the work takes three hours and a restore takes ninety minutes, book at least a five-hour window. Saying this in the description helps clients choose the right window length.

Send a short report the same night or next morning: what was done, how long it took, anything left open and what to watch in the coming days. Book a post-maintenance check yourself a day or two later, so performance and errors are reviewed while the change is fresh. Keep your own log of each window per client; it makes the next planning call faster.

A client’s quiet hours may be your daytime. Say in the description which time zone your slots are in, and open windows that match the client’s off-hours when that suits you.

A failing server can't wait for the next booked window. Say in the description how clients reach you for emergencies and how urgent work is charged. If you take it on, book it yourself from your calendar so it's recorded; first and last name are required, email and phone optional, and the client receives a confirmation with a calendar file if you enter their email.

Clients can't move bookings online: they contact you, and you move the window from your bookings list and confirm it yourself, since Book doesn't email clients about changes. Say in the description how much notice you need to move a window. Book doesn't take payments, so say how work is invoiced. Your bookings sync with Google, iPhone or Mac calendars. Book costs €5/month, everything included: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no contract.