Office 365 Monitoring: Admin Portal Access Issue (Feb. 3, 2022)

On February 3, 2022, at ~04:36 am UTC, Microsoft communicated via tweet (@MSFT365status) that they were investigating an issue in which users (in Europe) were unable to access the Microsoft 365 admin portal.

Initially, Microsoft provided no incident # for users to reference, as any user experiencing issues may not have been able to access the admin portal to gather additional information. In its place, Microsoft was directing impacted users to access status.office.com for updated information as to the service incident.

Approximately an hour later, Microsoft was confirming that a recent update on their end was causing the issue (although there was no deeper explanation as to what the "issue" was).  Microsoft was reverting the update in an effort to remediate.

At approximately 08:38 am, Microsoft then stated the update reversion was completed and restarts were done and that they would continue to monitor to ensure recovery.

As far as information from Microsoft via status.office.com, additional details from Microsoft confirmed that the impacted geo was not confined to Europe, but also included the Middle East and Africa, as well as an admission from Microsoft that the service incident at hand could potentially affect other geo regions as well.  Microsoft also gave signs that service health was improving at this time.

Some 7 hours after first disclosing the issue via @MSFT365status, Microsoft still had not confirmed the issue resolved, but they were taking significant steps in that direction.

At 12:01 pm, Microsoft was finally able to confirm that remediation actions were completed and the issue was now resolved. Microsoft at this time also provided an incident #, MO320759, for system admins with access to the admin portal.  When last checked, status.office.com also was showing no issues as to Microsoft 365 service health.

The Importance of Office 365 Monitoring

In a cloud-world, outages are bound to happen. While Microsoft is responsible for restoring service during outages, IT needs to take ownership of their environment and user experience. It is crucial to have greater visibility into business impacts during a service outage the moment it happens.

ENow’s Office 365 Monitoring and Reporting solution enables IT Pros to pinpoint the exact services effected and root cause of the issues an organization is experiencing during a service outage by providing:

• The ability to monitor networks and entire environments in one place with ENow’s OneLook dashboard which makes identifying a problem fast and easy without having to scramble through Twitter and the Service Health Dashboard looking for answers.
• A full picture of all services and subset of services affected during an outage with ENow’s remote probes which covers several Office 365 apps and other cloud-based collaboration services.

Identify the scope of Office 365 service outage impacts and restore workplace productivity with ENow’s Office 365 Monitoring and Reporting solution. Access your free 14-day trial today!