Have you considered including a “Maintenance mode” entry in the User Tools menu ?
Sometimes I need to work directly on the database, or I want to do a massive operation with the workbench, and I’d feel more peace of mind if I were to know that no one else is working on the system at the same time (though I know WB has been designed to address concurrent access, and I could stop the web server when working directly on the DB).
Institutional scoping might add complexity though, putting a whole institution on maintenance, or just a division or a discipline…
But let’s say a maintenance mode at institution level, that would only accept logging from institution admin and show a “maintenance mode” screen to any other user.
This is similar to a request we’ve heard before from CSIRO asking for a way to add a global notification banner for all users:
Because the capability you’ve described is distinct, I’ve created a new issue on GitHub for this! I think it’s a very interesting idea and something that would definitely benefit admin users when performing intensive actions in Specify (tree edits, batch edits, WorkBench uploads, etc.)
To add to this, I am not sure how common it is with the various monitoring providers, but ours has the ability to add in an announcement banner into applications that syncs up to maintenance notifications on the status page.
Obviously not super critical, but a nice to have if easy to work into the implementation.
entry in the User Tools menu ?