Microsoft Teams is currently down, causing access issues and creating what Microsoft termed as “several problems” for many of its users. The problem started around 11 a.m. EST on Friday and quickly expanded in scale, according to outage tracker DownDetector. Users have reported difficulties in accessing the service, delays in sending and receiving messages, and problems with displaying graphics.Microsoft mentioned on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, that it has identified “a networking issue affecting a portion of the Teams service” and has shifted some services to backup systems. By approximately 1:30 p.m. EST, the company confirmed that the backup transition had been completed for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and that its monitoring systems were showing signs of improvement.The company stated that the transfer to backup systems for North and South America was ongoing. Reports of outages on DownDetector had decreased to nearly half of their peak level as of 3 p.m. EST, but subsequently stabilized, indicating continued problems.Teams is a messaging and video conferencing application with over 320 million monthly average users as of September 2023.X users in the U.S. continued to raise concerns about Teams service issues, with multiple users ironically expressing gratitude to Microsoft for resolving the problem swiftly in regions where the workday had already ended. In a subsequent tweet, Microsoft acknowledged that its backup transition “did not immediately alleviate the issues for all end-users in North and South America regions,” but stated that its other mitigation efforts aimed to “minimize the impact on customers as quickly as possible.”Microsoft’s public tweets on the matter referred to additional details available in a document posted in an administrative dashboard for Microsoft 365 software. When asked about that document, a Microsoft spokesperson at the public relations firm WE Communications stated that the company’s X posts were the sole information it would disclose on the subject.But Microsoft offered a somewhat grimmer perspective to its customers in the document, obtained by the Associated Press. The document outlined around a dozen different issues caused by the outage, including the inability to log into the service, missing or delayed messages, as well as the inability to access or view images, video, audio recordings, and other media. In an update at 4:26 p.m. EST, the company stated that its efforts to bypass problems had led to issues with backend components of its system that essentially “throttled” data traffic.At 5:02 p.m. EST, Microsoft also acknowledged that “many customers remain affected by this issue,” but stated that the company was witnessing “a reduction in errors and an increase in (service) availability.” The company has also stated that it is working on addressing specific failures of Teams functions in addition to its broader network efforts.According to DownDetector, the reported problems with Teams have continued to decrease but are still significantly higher than normal levels as of 6 p.m. EST.
