On Friday, Microsoft Teams experienced an outage that blocked access for some and caused what Microsoft described as “multiple issues” for many users.
The problem began around 11 a.m. EST and grew quickly, according to outage tracker DownDetector. Users complained about the inability to access the service, delays in sending and receiving messages, and problems displaying graphics.
Microsoft said in messages on At around 1:30 p.m. EST, the company reported that the backup transition for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East was complete and that its tracking systems were showing improvements.
The company said backup transitions are underway for North and South America. DownDetector outage reports fell to nearly half their peak at 3:00 p.m. EST but then plateaued, indicating ongoing problems.
Teams is a messaging and video conferencing app with over 320 million average monthly users (as of September 2023).
U.S.-based Microsoft acknowledged in a subsequent tweet that the backup move “did not provide immediate relief to all end users in the Americas regions,” but said the other remedial attempts were aimed at “limiting the impact on customers.” to reduce as quickly as possible.”
Microsoft's public tweets on the matter have pointed to additional details available in a document posted to a Microsoft 365 software management dashboard. When asked about that document, a Microsoft spokesman told PR firm WE Communications that the company's X posts were the only information it would share on the topic.
But Microsoft offered customers a somewhat bleaker outlook in the document, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The document listed about a dozen different issues caused by the outage, including the inability to log into the service, missing or delayed messages, and the inability to access or view images, videos, audio recordings and other media. In an update at 4:26 p.m. EST, the company said its efforts to work around issues had resulted in issues with backend parts of its system that effectively “throttled” traffic.
At 5:02 p.m. EST, Microsoft also acknowledged that “many customers continue to be affected by this issue,” but said the company is seeing “a reduction in errors and an increase in (service) availability.” The company also said it is working to address specific Teams feature outages in parallel with its broader network efforts.
According to DownDetector, reported issues with Teams continued to decline and were close to normal levels as of 7:45 p.m. EST.