Microsoft 365 Access Issues, Local ISP North America, January 2023

On January 17, 2023, at ~9:17 AM ET, Microsoft communicated via tweet (@MSFT365status) that they were investigating an issue in which some North America users were having Microsoft 365 access issues.

We're investigating an issue where some users in North America are unable to access Microsoft 365 services. We're analyzing network trace logs to isolate the source of the issue. Please visit your admin center and look for MO498385 for further updates.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 17, 2023

Initial community responses on Twitter gave indications that this issue may be related to a local ISP. And Microsoft's second message confirmed this as a local ISP issue.

Our telemetry indicates that the Microsoft-managed network environment is healthy. The issue appears to be limited to a specific local ISP. For more details please look for MO498385 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 17, 2023

An active community response thread on Twitter had some users claiming that this was NOT a local ISP issue, notwithstanding the public statements from @MSFT365status.

Microsoft's next community message indicated that the local ISP for the impacted North America region had "restarted" certain network components, and some impacted users where confirming issue resolution.

The local ISP has restarted some network components and we've had reports from some users that the issue is resolved. Additionally, we have had reports that the issue persists for some users and we're investigating this further. Further details can be found under MO498385.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 17, 2023

Approximately 5 hours from first report, Microsoft's last message as to issue MO498385 indicated that the matter was resolved.

The local ISP took additional action to reroute connections to alternate infrastructure, and we've confirmed that the issue is now resolved. Please see MO498385 in the Microsoft 365 admin center for more info.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) January 17, 2023

The Importance of Microsoft 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 Microsoft 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 Microsoft 365 apps and other cloud-based collaboration services.

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