Pre-Thanksgiving 2024 Microsoft Outage

Did the latest Microsoft outage impact your company? On November 25, 2024, just days before Thanksgiving, Microsoft users experienced issues with Microsoft 365 features and services. By noon Eastern time, more than 5,300 people globally had reported issues with Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, and Teams.
Figure 1: Outage in the M365 Service Health Portal (ID: MO941162) 

M365 Outage on November 25, 2024  

The first reports of the outage happened around 4 a.m. Eastern time. Users were experiencing issues in Outlook and Exchange, stating they could not properly access or send emails. Other issues reported referred to the collaboration workspace—Microsoft Teams. Microsoft users could not access their calendars in Teams or receive calendar notifications.  

Microsoft released a thread of posts on X.com to notify customers that they were aware of the issue and working to resolve what they thought may have started from a software update. The company stated, “We’ve identified a recent change which we believe has resulted in impact.”   

Figure 2: Microsoft communicates with users via X.com about the status of solving issues

Users went to X to express their frustrations to Microsoft, but some thanked Microsoft for the break right before the U. S’s Thanksgiving holiday. One user posted, “I just wanted to put my feet up and drink coffee this week. Thanks, Microsoft.”  

Figure 3: X user expressing frustration via X.com 

Around noon Eastern time, Microsoft reported  “Our fix has reached approximately 98% of the affected environments, and our targeted restarts required for mitigation are being performed as quickly as possible.” However, customers were still reporting that they were having issues. Shortly after, Microsoft issued another statement saying they were experiencing delays with the solution and that users should refer to the admin center under MO941162. Finally, around 3:00 pm Eastern time on November 26, 2024, Microsoft reported that the issues had been resolved.  

How Can ENow Help Your Organization Pre-Outage Announcement? 

As we know, outages are bound to happen and significantly impact workplace productivity. With ENow’s Microsoft 365 Monitoring Tool,  your IT team can be ahead of the news and report to your organization effectively and quickly. With Microsoft's often (very) delayed announcements and slowly released updates, many IT teams are bombarded with support tickets and repetitive questions about restoration timelines. ENow's Microsoft 365 Monitoring Tools put you back in the driver's seat, enabling quick troubleshooting so you can communicate or remediate. Microsoft doesn't always give you much to go on, and you don't want to waste time if there is something you could be doing to restore service to your users.   

Figure 4: The ENow dashboard shows services were degraded and shows integration with X for the MSFT365Status profile and Service Health Page Updates for a consolidated view of the outage.  

The Microsoft 365 Monitoring tool gives organizations greater visibility and service deliverability while increasing employee workplace productivity. The tool monitors your environment, and during outages, it reports on the root cause of said outage and whether the problem is internal or a Microsoft issue by letting you drill into highlighted problem areas. Pinpointing the problem can alleviate your IT team's stress and help them plan an effective strategy to communicate and/or resolve the issue, depending on its source. 

Microsoft’s provided dashboards and service overviews don’t give you the full picture you had during the on-premises days. ENow’s Monitoring and Remote Probes help you regain that control and confidence to enable maximum deliverability and uptime for your users. Want to learn more about the gaps and what to do about them? Check out our white paper, Addressing the Monitoring Gaps in Microsoft 365. 

If you want more details about the ENow Microsoft 365 Monitoring Tool, contact us for a demo.