How the Microsoft 365 outage unfolded – a timelinepublished at 17:16 GMT 13 November
Tinshui Yeung
Live reporter
Image source, DowndetectorWebsite Downdetector noted hundreds of reports on Thursday evening and Friday morning
All timestamps are in GMT, according to posts published on X.
12 November 17:54: Microsoft first acknowledges reports that users in the Americas are unable to access Exchange Online mailboxes.
18:07: Microsoft warns that the disruption may affect Microsoft 365 connectivity globally, not just in the Americas.
19:31: The company says an investigation found that a number of services had become “unexpectedly unavailable”, straining the remaining infrastructure.
19:50: Engineers start focusing on an issue that caused servers to fail automated health checks and become unavailable.
23:04: Microsoft says it’s returning some affected servers to service, and they “remain stable”.
13 November 00:06: Microsoft says servers returned to service can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic, and it is analysing the data to find out why.
04:36: After a series of efforts, Microsoft says it is seeing “partial recovery” in some regions.
09:24: “We’re seeing early stabilization and capacity improvements as recovery actions continue,” the company says.
13:32: The company says there are “broader improvements” in North America, “sustained improvements” across much of Europe and “encouraging recovery signals” in the Asia Pacific region.
14:17: The company says it’s continuing to see improvements, with email queues “significantly reduced and approaching normal levels”.
15:39: Microsoft says it’s “seeing encouraging recovery process”, and confirms that “there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity”.
Source: www.bbc.com
