Microsoft Teams outage widens to take out M365 services, admin center

Remember: telephones exist, are handy for collaboration, and usually work

Updated Microsoft's Teams collaboration environment is experiencing an outage, depriving unknown numbers of people of the opportunity to enjoy video and/or audio conferences, or to access documents.

Microsoft acknowledged the issue at 01:47 UTC on July 21 and offered the following update around 75 minutes later:

We’ve determined that a recent deployment contained a broken connection to an internal storage service, which has resulted in impact. We’re working to direct traffic to a healthy service to mitigate impact. Additional information can be found in the admin center under TM402718.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 21, 2022

The outage appears to be global, but Microsoft is perhaps a little fortunate that the incident struck when the working day was all but over in the US, and in the dark of the European night. Most of the reaction The Register can find is therefore from the Asia-Pacific region, where businesses such as an Australian horse-racing organization have been disrupted.

Due to a worldwide outage of Microsoft Teams, The Racing & Stewards Offices are only contactable via email.
No ETA given.
Further communication will be relayed once the phone system in back online.
Racing Office: [e-mail]
Stewards: [e-mail]

— The Trots WA (@TheTrotsWA) July 21, 2022

Others have wryly observed that the outage will allow workers some unplanned but welcome downtime.

"There's a global outage with MS Teams. Global support teams are working on the resolution of the issue."

Me: pic.twitter.com/7PtiZVFqSA

— Jox Populi 🏳️‍🌈 (@Joxyfication) July 21, 2022

Some are seeking to profit from the incident.

Officially selling the "I Survived the microsoft teams outage 21 July 2022" T shirts

Don't forget this exciting moment for microsft teams #msteams #microsoftteams ms teams pic.twitter.com/F4Lu3Gdsx0

— MetaverseTownHall (@MetaverseTownHl) July 21, 2022

The Register would like to take this opportunity to wish readers the best during this trying time, and to remind them that olde-timey devices called "telephones" still exist and can quite easily arrange at least three-way calls. Those who attend offices may also wish to consider "walking" to a "meeting room" – a facility established with the express purpose of allowing teams of people to interact. ®

Updated to add at 0400 UTC, July 21

Microsoft has advised that trouble with Teams has taken out other services, too.

We've identified downstream impact to multiple Microsoft 365 services with Teams integration, such as Microsoft Word, Office Online and SharePoint Online. We're providing updates for those services via MO402741 in the admin center or through https://t.co/AEUj8uAGXl.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 21, 2022

Among the services troubled by the outage is the admin center, where Microsoft offers info on outages. The software giant has therefore recommended visiting https://status.office.com/ for updates.

At the time of writing that page advises: "The Teams desktop app may sign in successfully, though all functionalities may be down, and users may see the following message: 'We ran into a problem. Reconnecting…' Users leveraging the web client may see a message stating 'Operation failed with unexpected error'."

Microsoft's most recent update advises "We've taken action to reroute a portion of traffic to provide some relief within the environment. We anticipate that some users may be able to access the affected features shortly."