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Microsoft Teams experienced an outage on Friday that blocked access for some and caused what Microsoft calls “multiple issues” for many users.
The issue began around 11 a.m. EST and its scope grew rapidly, according to outage tracker DownDetector. Users complained about inability to access the service, delays in sending and receiving messages, and problems displaying graphics.
Microsoft said in messages on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, that it identified “a network issue affecting a portion of the Teams service” and that it had moved some services to backup systems. At approximately 1:30 p.m. EST, the company reported that the backup transition had been completed for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East and that its tracking systems were showing improvements.
The company said support changes were underway for North and South America. Outage reports on DownDetector fell to nearly half of their peak level at 3 pm EST, but subsequently stabilized, indicating ongoing issues.
Teams is a messaging and video conferencing application with more than 320 million average monthly users as of September 2023.
US-based X users continued to complain about issues with the Teams service, with several sarcastically thanking Microsoft for quickly fixing the issue in regions where the work day has already ended. In a subsequent tweet, Microsoft acknowledged that its support change “did not provide immediate relief to all end users in the North and South America regions,” but said its other mitigation attempts were intended to “reduce the impact to the customer as quickly as possible.
Microsoft’s public tweets on the matter have pointed to additional details available in a document posted on an administrative dashboard for Microsoft 365 software. When asked about that document, a Microsoft spokesperson at public relations firm WE Communications said the X company publications were the only information it would share on the subject.
But Microsoft offered a somewhat bleaker picture to its customers in that document, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The document details about a dozen different issues caused by the outage, including inability to log into the service, lost or delayed messages, and inability to access or view images, videos, audio recordings, and other media. In an update at 4:26 p.m. EST, the company said that its efforts to fix the problems had led to problems with the backend parts of its system that were effectively “throttling” data traffic.
At 5:02 p.m. EST, Microsoft also acknowledged that “many customers are still 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 was working to address specific flaws in Teams features in parallel with its broader networking efforts.
According to DownDetector, reported issues with Teams continued to decline and were near normal levels as of 7:45 pm EST.