How do you broadcast msg to users the system is going down, etc.

We are moving from ERP8 on iSeries to 8.12 on wintel. Wintel is a little foreign to me. What do you use to tell all the users that you are going to bounce the services during the day? Or do you just do it? What's the cleanest way to broadcast a message to 80 users?
I know, a pretty general question. Please forgive me, I did try searching but came up empty.

Jerry,

We use emails (we have an email group for all JDE users) followed up by phone calls. We also use the broadcast message facility on the Server Administration Workbench (SAW) on our web server.

Hi John,

It's not a silly question, it's related to the social
component of being a nice and well-loved CNC guy.

Users tend to be quite conservative, so they love to be
told in advance of any change that may affect their lifes,
even if it's as quick as bouncing a service.

So, to sustain a harmonious a peaceful environment, I
never shutdown the application without telling them
at least 30 minutes in advance. I also try to explain
them the reason I do so (even if they don't understand a
word of "CNCish" , they do appreciate the effort)

From the practical point of view, I either use the
SAW broadcast utility (Web clients), or Windows command
Net Send (Fat Clients) or a plain combination of email,
phone (just for managers!) and roof high-speaker.

I don't know how kind and patient your users are, but
most I know will turn angry if you abruptly shutdown JDE.

Have a nice day,

Thanks Peter and Sebastian for your replies.

My situation came up when some of the processes on the Ent. Server started grabbing all the CPU and therefore some users started to get locked up. I made a couple of phone calls to let various departments know what I had to do. But never does everyone get the word they should have.

So what I'm really looking for is a quick notification. Email is to slow. And the SAW message seems like it is only delivered to users that are in a app. If they just have menu up, they don't get the message. Oh, and NET SEND doesn't work from Vista.

Anybody else have some thoughts?

If your users are using Windows and logon to domain, you might want to consider Winmsg. I was using that on NT server a few years ago. You can simply type in 'winmsg' from Start --> Run.

If 'Messenger' service is started on all machines (started by default) than you can use a simple 'net send' command or one of many programs that utilize this service.

But this is co called 'last resort' - mail + phone is best because you send message to people not to just users