Microsoft Teams, a popular business communication platform, experienced a significant outage that lasted for over eight hours on Friday. Users across North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa reported issues with logging in, missing messages and attachments, delays, and more. The outage impacted both individual users and organizations, potentially disrupting crucial business operations.
Microsoft acknowledged the problem around 11:45 AM ET after a spike in problem reports on DownDetector. They identified a networking issue that affected a portion of the Teams service and initiated failovers to resolve it. Despite the effort, the failover operation did not immediately alleviate all the problems, leaving many users unable to access the platform effectively.
The exact cause of the outage is still unknown, but Microsoft teams have been working diligently to apply mitigations and optimize traffic. The company has been evaluating the remaining impact scenarios and developing fixes to address all lingering issues related to the incident. However, the lengthy duration of the outage raises concerns about the platform’s reliability and resilience.
Users encountered various issues during the outage. Some users who performed a cold boot found themselves unable to log into Teams and were greeted with an “oops” page. Others experienced missing messages after logging in or unlocking their devices after some time. Loading messages in channels and chats became a challenge, and media files such as images, videos, and call recordings were inaccessible. Additional problems included delays in sending messages, longer wait times for call recordings to appear in user’s OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, and difficulties in downloading attachments for bots.
Microsoft has been actively working on mitigations and fixes to minimize the impact on affected customers. They have made significant progress in improving the user experience and are focused on resolving individual affected Teams features. However, certain issues, such as anonymous users being unable to join meetings and delayed read receipt notifications, may persist. Microsoft advises users not to reboot their computers until the all-clear is given to ensure a smooth login process.
Administrators and users can monitor the status of Microsoft Teams through the TM710344 reference code. The company’s status page, which initially showed no problems, was updated with a description of the ongoing issues. It outlined the specific impact scenarios that users may encounter and provided updates on the progress of the recovery efforts.
This is not the first time Microsoft Teams has faced a significant outage. In fact, it had a four-hour outage exactly a year ago and experienced multiple outages in 2021, 2020, and 2019. The duration of this recent eight-hour outage has led to questions about the platform’s reliability, especially for critical business operations that heavily depend on uninterrupted communication and collaboration.
The eight-hour outage of Microsoft Teams has undoubtedly caused frustration and disruption for its users. While the company has been working diligently to address the issues and improve the user experience, the incident raises concerns about the platform’s overall stability. Users and organizations relying on Microsoft Teams for their daily operations should remain vigilant and consider contingency plans to mitigate potential future outages.
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