Visitor Management Module Inaccessible

Incident Postmortem: Visitor Management System Outage
Date: 13 May 2025
Duration: 11:33–12:03 (UTC+1)
Status: Resolved

Summary

On 13 May at 11:33 UTC+1, we became aware of an issue affecting the Visitor Management system. During the 30-minute window, users were unable to access key visitor features. The issue was identified and resolved by 12:03, with full service restored across all affected environments.

Impact

During the incident window, users of the Visitor Management system experienced the following issues:

• Inability to create new visitor entries
• Reception staff could not view expected guests
• Reception staff could not see who was currently in the building
• Check-in functionality for pre-booked visitors was unavailable
• Walk-in visitor registration was not possible

The impact was global across all customers using the Visitor Management feature.

Root Cause

The incident was triggered by the deployment of a new feature related to visitor access control. An unexpected behaviour occurred in the authentication layer during the deployment process. While the change had undergone standard review and validation procedures, the specific production context introduced an unforeseen issue that affected key service functions.

Resolution

Our engineering team quickly identified the issue and rolled back the affected component. Normal functionality was restored by 12:03 UTC+1.

Preventative Measures

To reduce the risk of recurrence, we are implementing the following improvements:

• Enhanced validation of authentication flows in production-like environments
• Introduction of release-specific smoke tests immediately following deployment
• Clearer scoping and scheduling of work in periods leading up to major internal or external milestones

We appreciate your patience during this time and remain committed to maintaining a stable and reliable platform.