There is a sense of urgency at Microsoft as it works to contain the fallout from an Exchange Online authentication error that has made sending and receiving mail impossible for many. With the stakes for its position in workplace communications high, the event tracked as EX1464935 is prompting some to question the resilience of the cloud during the workday.
Microsoft has put a name to the problem: a faulty authentication component. Engineers have put together a remedy and are testing it on part of the infrastructure to be sure of the results. By calling it an incident, the company is signalling the seriousness of what users have been up against.
What Microsoft confirmed
While looking into user reports, Microsoft first saw the spike in failures at 5:30 PM UTC. The company says it has homed in on a pattern of failure common to authentication and protocol connectivity in the requests coming in to Exchange Online.
A short note from its official status account put it plainly: the issue has been identified and a remediation is being trialled for a wider roll out once it is verified. In a later update, Microsoft pointed to MO1465074 to note the same component is having an effect on services other than Exchange Online.
How big is the impact
The numbers suggest a widespread affair. Downdetector has had ‘Microsoft Outlook down’ and ‘Microsoft outage’ in its trends, with tens of thousands of Exchange Online users unable to get to the platform or receive their mail.
Here in the US, the trouble started about 8 a.m. PT on August 31. By 8:17 a.m. PT there were over 6,000 reports on the books. An hour and a half later, more than 3,000 were still logging issues, mostly to do with incoming messages.
We have seen reports from New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, Texas and Alabama. As of 3:15 p.m. EDT, thousands were still flagging problems. Whether this is related to the kind of connectivity trouble some have reported with Microsoft Azure, Teams or the Store is something Microsoft has not yet put to rest.
What users are seeing
Microsoft has outlined the most obvious symptoms, cautioning that the disruption to Outlook will be felt because the client is reliant on Exchange Online for delivery and mailbox access.
If one follows Microsoft’s lead, these are the main things to expect:
– Messages failing to send or arrive
– Hitting authentication errors on Exchange Online
– Some friction with Exchange administration
– Occasional failures in mailbox and delivery
Downdetector gives you a picture of where the pain points are. Of the complaints filed, 37% were about receiving mail, 23% the application and 20% the website. There are also tales of difficulty with searching, opening Outlook and sending, so it is clear several aspects of the experience are compromised.
Why this outage matters now
It is a sensitive time. For many an organisation, Outlook and Exchange Online are the backbone of email; an authentication breakdown is a risk to continuity. You can have a perfectly good app but if Exchange Online is stalled, Outlook will seem broken.
This is not an isolated case. Over the last few months there have been a number of hiccups. In June, Microsoft had to deal with a service issue in the mail flow pipeline for customers across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. April brought sporadic access problems for macOS and mobile Outlook users, as well as an outage that shut out anyone trying to connect via the web, desktop or ActiveSync.
Microsoft’s remediation approach
Internal tests are underway as Microsoft fine-tunes its approach. The plan is to apply the fix to a small part of the infrastructure and let the telemetry speak for itself before going broader.
Do not expect an instant recovery. Service should come back as capacity is put in place. The company is poring over the service telemetry to get to the root of it and see what else might be affected.
What to do next
This is a failure on the provider, not a matter of individual account settings. Tinkering with local options will not make a difference for those with urgent business until the fix from Microsoft takes hold.
For the latest word, one can check the service communications at EX1464935 or look at the notes for MO1465074. Downdetector is another way to gauge improvement as the volume of reports wanes.
Plan for some intermittent access until the rollout is done. Should Outlook sign in but the inbox refuse to refresh, that is in line with the Exchange Online authentication constraint Microsoft has tied to this incident.
