If you make use of Microsoft’s online services like Teams, Office 365 or Outlook.com, then you may have faced issues with them earlier. Microsoft has since confirmed that its services have indeed been having issues, and that they are now working as normal.
In a series of tweets, the Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account posted updates as they unfolded. It says that the company thought initially that a recently made change was the cause of the service disruption. Despite the rollback, the company observed no improvement in the situation.
Microsoft then rerouted traffic, which saw the situation gradually improve over time. A couple of hours later, the company confirmed that the issue has been resolved, but stopped short of explaining what exactly happened.
We’ve confirmed that the residual issue has been addressed and the incident has been resolved. Any users still experiencing impact should be mitigated shortly. Additional details can be found in the admin center under MO222965 or https://t.co/lbjX5iaxCX
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) September 29, 2020
Throughout the ordeal, those who have their account logged in will still have access to Microsoft’s online services. At least, until their authentication token expires. In which case, they will be logged out since re-authentication could not happen at the time.
Outages like this are unfortunate, and especially so during a time when working remotely is more common now than ever before. Alternatives are available, but it’s not always easy to just switch over to another service. This is especially if you can’t retrieve work saved on the unavailable service, and if it’s a collaborative effort.
(Source: Microsoft / Twitter)
