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Configuration Scope: Environment-Specific

Maintenance mode is configured per environment (dev, test, prod). Changes must be applied separately in each environment.

Maintenance mode

Maintenance mode lets you temporarily restrict access to Brief Connect during planned activities such as upgrades, migrations, or administrative maintenance.

When maintenance mode is enabled:

  • Regular users are shown a full-page maintenance notice and cannot use the application.
  • System Administrators can still access the application and will see a prominent maintenance banner.
  • Background processing (for example timer jobs and queue processing) is paused to reduce the risk of data loss during maintenance windows.

Who can access Brief Connect during maintenance

Only System Administrators can access Brief Connect while maintenance mode is enabled.

For help granting System Administrator access, see System Administrator access.

Enable maintenance mode

Maintenance mode is controlled via the MAINTENANCE_MODE environment variable.

  1. Open the Function App (or API host) for the environment you want to place into maintenance.
  2. Go to Configuration → Application settings.

  3. Add or update the setting:

  4. Name: MAINTENANCE_MODE

  5. Value: true

  6. Save changes and allow the app to restart (if prompted).

Disable maintenance mode

  1. Open the Function App (or API host) for the environment.
  2. Go to Configuration → Application settings.

  3. Either:

  4. Set MAINTENANCE_MODE to false, or

  5. Remove the MAINTENANCE_MODE setting entirely.

  6. Save changes and allow the app to restart (if prompted).

Verify maintenance mode is working

  • As a regular user: load Brief Connect and confirm you see a maintenance message and cannot proceed.
  • As a System Administrator: load Brief Connect and confirm you can access the UI and see a maintenance banner.
  • API behaviour: non-System Administrator requests to write/update endpoints may return 503 Service Unavailable while maintenance is enabled.

Notes

  • Some Admin Panel actions (such as configuration changes) may be blocked unless you are a System Administrator while maintenance mode is active.
  • If maintenance mode appears to remain enabled unexpectedly, confirm MAINTENANCE_MODE is disabled/removed and restart the host to ensure configuration and cached state are refreshed.