On Friday, there was a disruption with Microsoft Teams which prevented some users from accessing the platform. This resulted in various problems for a large number of users, according to Microsoft.

The problem started at approximately 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and quickly expanded, according to the monitoring tool DownDetector. People reported being unable to use the service, experiencing delays in sending and receiving messages, and encountering difficulties with displaying images.

On X, Microsoft announced on X that they found a problem with the networking of a part of the Teams service. To address this, they have switched some services to backup systems. As of 1:30 p.m. EST, they have completed the transition for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and are seeing improvements according to their tracking systems.

The company announced that the backup switchovers for North and South America were still in progress. Reports of outages on DownDetector decreased by almost half of their highest point at 3 p.m. EST, but then remained steady, suggesting that problems were still occurring.

As of September 2023, Teams has a monthly average of 320 million users and is utilized for messaging and video conferencing.

X users based in the U.S. continued to complain about Teams service issues, with several sarcastically thanking Microsoft for fixing the problem quickly in regions where the workday is already over. In a subsequent tweet, Microsoft acknowledged that its backup switchover “did not provide immediate relief to all end users in North and South America regions” but said its other attempts at mitigation aimed to “reduce customer impact as quickly as possible.”

Microsoft has shared information on the topic through public tweets and a document accessible on the administrative dashboard for Microsoft 365 software. When questioned about the document, a spokesperson from Microsoft’s public relations firm WE Communications stated that the company’s X posts contain all the information they are able to share on the subject.

Microsoft provided a less optimistic update to its clients in the aforementioned document, obtained by The Associated Press. The document outlined approximately twelve problems stemming from the outage, such as the inability to login to the service, delayed or missing messages, and difficulty viewing media such as images, videos, and audio recordings. In a 4:26 p.m. EST update, the company acknowledged that their attempts to work around the issues had resulted in complications with the backend of their system, resulting in data traffic being limited.

At 5:02 p.m. EST, Microsoft stated that a significant number of customers are still affected by the issue, but they have noticed a decrease in errors and an improvement in service availability. The company is actively working on resolving specific failures within Teams while also addressing the larger network issues.

DownDetector reported that problems with Teams decreased and were almost back to normal at 7:45 p.m. EST.

Source: wral.com