Upgrade Notifications for App Service (Preview)

The Azure App Service is a PaaS solution offering in Azure which constantly updates the platform. One of the top requests from customers is to receive a notification before an upgrade operation happens.

We are happy to announce that notifications for scheduled maintenance on App Service Environments is now available in Preview. With these notifications, you will be able to receive email or SMS text alerts before a platform upgrade starts. You can also invoke Azure Functions or Logic Apps based on these notifications. This feature has been rolled out for App Service Environments (ASEs) across our regions. This article shows how to set up email and SMS alerts, as well as Function and Logic Apps to consume the events.

Support for the multi-tenant version of App Service will be coming soon.

Overview

Our maintenance notification for App Service is an event in Azure Monitor. This means that you can set up your email address and/or SMS phone number when a notification is generated. You can also set up a trigger for your custom Azure Function or Logic App, which allows you to automatically take action to your resources. For example, you can automatically divert all the traffic from your ASE in one region which will be upgraded to ASE in another region in order to avoid any potential impact. Then you can automatically change the traffic back to normal when an upgrade completes. Please refer to Logic App sample for automatic traffic diversion for Azure App Service for more details.

Viewing upgrade notifications

On the Azure portal, go to Home > Monitor > Service Health > Planned maintenance. Here you can see all active (including upcoming or in-progress) notifications for the selected subscriptions. To make it easy to find App Service upgrade events, click Service box, check all App Service types and uncheck everything else. To see past notifications, navigate to Health history and filter Planned maintenance from the Health Event Type box.

Setting up alerts

1. Open Azure portal, sign in with your credentials.
2. Search an icon named Monitor and click it. If you cannot see it, click the big right arrow on the right to show All services, then search Monitor.
3. In the left menu items, click Alerts.
4. Click Service Health.
5. Click Add service health alert at the top center.
6. In the Condition section, choose the subscription that owns your ASEs.
7. At the Service(s) box, choose all items starting with App Service:
   • App Service
   • App Service \ Web Apps
   • App Service (Linux)
   • App Service (Linux) \ Web App for Containers
   • App Service (Linux) \ Web App.
8. At the Region(s) box, make sure to check the regions of the ASEs.
9. At the Event type box, check Planned maintenance.
10. In the Actions section, click Add action groups.
11. Click Create alert rule.
12. Select a subscription that your ASE belongs to.
13. Choose a resource group and name an action group. Set Display name to something you can easily identify the action (IMPORTANT: The display name will be shown in every email/SMS/post of the notifications.)
14. If you want to receive text notifications: In the Notifications section, choose Email/SMS message/Push/Voice at the Notification type. Then choose output channels you need (For example, Email or SMS.) Put email addresses or phone number as necessary.
15. If you want to hook up your custom automation: In the Actions section, choose Azure Function or Logic App at the Action type. Put a name into the Name. Select your app.
16. Press Save changes. The page will go back to the Rules management page.
17. In the Alert rule details section, set a name.
18. Click Save.

More resources

• Azure Monitor documentation
• Common alert schema definitions
• Logic App sample for automatic traffic diversion for Azure App Service

FAQ

When do you send the upgrade notifications?

The first notifications will be created about 60 to 90 minutes before an actual upgrade operation starts. We don’t create notifications anything earlier due to some limitations at this moment.

Once the upgrade starts, we send in-progress notifications every 12 hours until the operation completes. After it’s finished we send a notification of completion.

Is it in preview now?

Yes, it’s currently in preview. We are collecting feedback and usage telemetry. We will announce a date for General Availability as one becomes available.

Can we get notifications earlier, like one day before?

At this time, 60 minutes to 90 minutes is the earliest notification lead-time.

Is it only available for ASEs?

Yes, currently it is only available for ASEs. We are actively working on enabling it for the multi-tenant version of App Service.

Can I invoke my Azure Function when a notification comes?

Yes, you can set up action to trigger your Azure Function or Logic App. Please see Logic App sample for automatic traffic diversion for Azure App Service as example.

To see the data format of the notifications, refer to Common alert schema definitions.