Microsoft Teams is Back Online After Global Outage

On Thursday, Microsoft Teams announced that its service is back online for most users after an hours-long outage. The downtime has disrupted the chat application for tens of thousands of customers globally.

The communication platform explained that the interruption came after a recent software update containing a broken connection to an internal storage service.

Accordingly, the software company explained that it currently looks for any residual impact related to the event. At the same time, they are monitoring any signs of failure until all functions are fully recovered.

Microsoft Teams, used by over 270 million people, form an integral part of daily operations for businesses and schools. Institutions use the service to make calls, schedule meetings and organize workflow.

Meanwhile, the firm did not disclose the number of users affected by the disruption. Nevertheless, outage tracking website Downdetector.com revealed 4,800 incidents in the United States and over 18,200 in Japan. Subsequently, the site tracks outages by collating status reports from sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform.

Affected users stated that they could not exchange messages or use any features of the application during the outage. Correspondingly, people took to Twitter to share updates and memes about the service disruption. Then, they use #MicrosoftTeams as a hashtag on the social media site.

Microsoft 365 services confirm impact of outage

Moreover, the company confirmed partial downstream impacts to multiple Microsoft 365 services with Teams integration. The outage has affected Microsoft Word, Office Online, and SharePoint Online.

Meanwhile, other major technology companies also faced outages in the past year. For example, Meta Platform previously reported a nearly six-hour disruption in October. This disruption kept WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger out of reach for billions of users last October.

Microsoft has benefited from a surge in demand for remote business teleconferencing and messaging tools. Eventually, MS Teams became a key fixture for organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic as people worked from homes.