Microsoft’s Teams collaboration environment is experiencing an outage, leaving an unknown number of people unable to participate in video and/or audio conferences or access documents.
Microsoft confirmed the issue on July 21 at 01:47 UTC and offered the following update about 75 minutes later:
We found that a recent deployment contained a dropped connection to an internal storage service, which was causing an impact. We are working to redirect traffic to a healthy service to mitigate the impact. For more information, see TM402718 in the admin center.
– Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 21, 2022
The outage appears to be global, but Microsoft may be a little lucky that the incident happened when the US workday was all but over, and in the dark of the European night. As a result, most of the reaction The Register can find comes from Asia Pacific, where businesses like an Australian horse racing organization have been disrupted.
Due to a global outage of Microsoft Teams, Racing & Stewards offices are only available via email.
No ETA given.
Further communication will be forwarded once the phone system is back online.
Race Office: [email protected]
Stewards: [email protected]— The Trots WA (@TheTrotsWA) July 21, 2022
Others have wryly noted that the outage will allow workers some unplanned but welcome downtime.
“There is a global outage at MS Teams. Global support teams are working to resolve the issue.”
Me: pic.twitter.com/7PtiZVFqSA
– Jox Populi 🏳️🌈 (@Joxyfication) July 21, 2022
Some are trying to capitalize on the incident.
Officially selling I Survived the Microsoft Teams outage 21 July 2022 t-shirts.
Don’t forget this exciting moment for Microsoft teams #msteams #microsoftteams MS teams pic.twitter.com/F4Lu3Gdsx0
— MetaverseTownHall (@MetaverseTownHl) July 21, 2022
The Register would like to take this opportunity to wish readers well at this difficult time, and to remind them that there are still devices from the old days called “telephones” that are used, quite simply, to arrange at least three-way calls can become. Those visiting offices may also want to consider going to a “meeting room” — a facility set up with the express purpose of allowing teams of people to interact. ®
Updated at 04:00 UTC, June 21st Microsoft has said problems with Teams have also knocked out other services.
We have identified downstream impacts across multiple Microsoft 365 services with Teams integration, such as: B. Microsoft Word, Office Online and SharePoint Online. We provide updates to these services via MO402741 in the admin center or via https://t.co/AEUj8uAGXl.
– Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 21, 2022
Among the services affected by the outage is the Admin Center, where Microsoft offers information about outages. The software giant therefore recommends visiting https://status.office.com/ for updates.
At the time of writing this page, it is recommended: “The Teams desktop app can sign in successfully, although all functionality may be down, and users may see the following message: ‘We’ve encountered a problem, you’ll see a message that says that the operation failed with an unexpected error.”
The latest update from Microsoft advises: “We have taken measures to redirect some traffic to relieve the environment some. We anticipate some users will be able to access the affected features shortly.”