Microsoft 365 Service Issues Continue with Outlook and Teams Outages

On back-to-back days this week, customers and users of Microsoft Outlook (June 27th) and Microsoft Teams (June 28th) were unable to access these services.  Initially, Microsoft communicated these service issues to its customers and indicated that the impacts were isolated to its North American customers, but community responses and feedback suggested the impacts stretched beyond the NA region.

Microsoft 365 Outage Incident Details

Earlier this month, Microsoft dealt with several service disruptions, most notably the June 9th Azure portal outage. Initially, Microsoft's communications to its customers were vague and limited as to the cause of the June 9th outage. Microsoft would ultimately announce that the Azure portal outage and other service incidents that week were the direct cause of DDoS attacks.

And it appears Microsoft, unfortunately, is ending the month of June much like it began the month: with additional major service interruptions for its customers.

Public Communications from Microsoft

Regarding the Microsoft Outlook issue (service incident EX610644), Microsoft's first public communication (via @MSFT365status) was on June 27th, at approximately 08:43 AM (ET).  Customers in North America were unable to access Outlook via the web.

We're investigating an Outlook for the web access issue affecting our customers in North America. Please refer to the Service Health Dashboard in the admin center under EX610644 for more details.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 27, 2023

Several hours later, Microsoft would confirm that the Outlook access issue impact was not isolated to just North America. Responses from the Microsoft user community on Twitter indicated impacts on customers in South America, Australia, and Europe. Other community responses made claims of service issues for most of the Microsoft 365 services, not just for Outlook.

We're continuing to investigate the issue causing impact to Outlook for the web. After further investigation, the issue is more widespread than North America. Please refer to the Service Health Dashboard in the admin center under EX610644 for more details.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 27, 2023

Microsoft would follow this message with more troubling news for its customers. Microsoft's first attempts to mitigate and resolve the issue were not successful and they were back at the drawing board as far as identifying a fix for what was now a major service disruption for many of its customers globally. As is normal for such outages and service disruptions, Microsoft remained very vague as to precise and detailed information as to the cause.

We applied a build change that did not recover service as expected. We’re reviewing alternate mitigation options to resolve this issue. Further details are available in the admin center under EX610644.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 27, 2023

Finally, some 6 hours after their first public message as to the issue, Microsoft was able to state confidently that the Outlook access issue had been mitigated.  There were no additional communications from Microsoft as to EX610644.

We've confirmed that deployment of the fix has completed, and impact has been mitigated. Additional details can be found in the admin center under EX610644.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 27, 2023

However, the very next day, June 28th, 2023, Microsoft was dealing with its second major service disruption for the week.  Now the issue was browser-based access for Microsoft Teams (service incident TM12617).

We're investigating an issue where some users may be unable to access Microsoft Teams using web browsers. Further details can be found under TM612617 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 28, 2023

There then followed an enormous amount of Microsoft community responses on Twitter with most voicing their continued frustration with repeated Microsoft 365 service issues and disruptions.  Other responses were quick to add that the impact was not merely browser-based access to Teams but that users were unable to access Teams through desktop clients, the desktop app, and on mobile.

Approximately 90 minutes later, Microsoft sent out its second message, indicating that a recent configuration change was the cause.  After reverting this change, Microsoft was now confirming Teams access improvements for all global regions impacted.

We’ve reverted a configuration change which resulted in impact. Early monitoring of service telemetry indicates we’re seeing availability improving in America, Asia-Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa regions. For more information, please see TM612617 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 28, 2023

And then three hours after first confirming the service issue, Microsoft sent its third and final public communication as to the global Microsoft Teams outage (TM612617) stating that the issue was completely resolved.

After a period of monitoring, we've confirmed reverting the configuration change has resolved the issue. For additional details, please see TM612617 in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) June 28, 2023

The Importance of Microsoft 365 Monitoring

In a cloud-based 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 platform provides this type of visibility so that users remain productive. It monitors Microsoft 365, your on-premises hybrid services and remote locations, through our OneLook Dashboard. This dashboard provides a single, easy-to-use, way to view at a quick glance, everything you must monitor in your environment without the need for separate tools - everything is integrated and monitored as one system.

ENow’s Microsoft 365 Monitoring and Reporting solution enables organizations to detect outages immediately, validate the end user experience, and increase adoption while controlling costs. It enables IT Pros to pinpoint the exact services affected and the 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!