
Available to your Office365 admin
End users probably won't have access to this; and it's not like their admins can send them an email...
Happy Monday, everyone! Microsoft is apparently celebrating this made-up Cyber Monday "holiday" by giving Office 365 users a break from all that pesky email, with Exchange services currently still out of whack. Users in the UK began noticing problems with the service late this morning, with things starting to get a little …
Well it wasn't very honest or helpful anyway:
Title: Can't access email
User Impact: Users may be unable to connect to the Exchange Online service
At least it's been updated a bit now.
Title: Can't access email
User Impact: Users may be unable to connect to the Exchange Online service.
More info: Affected users may be able to able to access the Exchange Online service if they refresh their connection.
Current status: We've determined that availability dropped below acceptable thresholds due to a networking issue. We've restricted some replication and migration requests through the affected infrastructure and while increasing connection points on alternate infrastructure to remediate impact.
Scope of impact: Impact is specific to a subset of users who are served through the affected infrastructure.
Start time: Monday, November 26, 2018, at 10:10 AM UTC
Next update by: Monday, November 26, 2018, at 2:30 PM UTC
You forget these are Microsoft minutes of which they quote...
We have learned from copying and downloading times in File Explorer and Internet Explorer that they bear very little resemblance to real-world minutes in duration, and are best thought of as measured on a rubber wristwatch...
Cyber Monday and Manic Monday are slightly different things (right-pondian marketing speak)
Cyber Monday is the Monday after Black Friday
Manic Monday is the Monday after November Payday when everybody comes into the office and starts buying stuff online.
They can fall on the same day depending on when Black Friday sits but this year they are a week apart
Tell me about it. We work with every kind of private, public, and hybrid "clouds" because our customers do. We have a rule: never schedule any demos related to Azure, not even internal ones or training, on Mondays.
It looks like MSFT roll out patches/features over weekend, and if they don't screw something up royally then you can count on them changing interfaces, controls, APIs, what not.
Hence the rule: schedule Azure demos for Wednesdays. Test on Monday, fix or work around whatever they broke over the weekend, test again on Tuesday.
everybody KNOWS that all eggs in one basket is a bad idea. It's just that the siren song of "The Cloud" drowns out the reality that it's still, one VERY LARGE basket.
And when that basket goes TITSUP and FUBAR, the eggs are broken. Ooops.
(captain obvious)
got Libre Office?
"Unfortunately LibreOffice doesn't include a mail client"
It is completely true that LibreOffice doesn't have a mail client, but I fail to see why any office suite should have one. On the other hand, I have found Thunderbird to be a superior alternative to Outlook.
Customers of mine that use T'bird rarely have problems. Those using on-prem Outlook have all sorts of inexplicable woes which when identified, fall into these categories:-
(i) Microsoft Updates (ii) a functionality of Outlook has changed between versions (deleted as well as added) (iii) Anti-Malware program interference (iv) mailbox corruption or bloated mailbox size (v) emails going walkabout (vi) winmail.dat issues (vii) licencing issues whilst using the legitimately licenced application.
(iv) and (vi) have decreased substantially in recent years, but bloated mailbox sluggishness has not. Trying to drive Outlook from a third-party program (MAPI) has some bizarre "rules" defining behaviour, which can be painful to satisfy.
Sorry, that was intended to be a succinct list, but the more I thought about it, the more that needed to be added.
One of the big snags with Outlook is the dangers of reinstallation to troubleshoot dire problems, will there be hassle with licencing issues upon reinstallation?
And people are still using Microsoft.
Joking aside. A company I contract for are embedded in MS cloud offerings. They run their own Exchange server but Office is the 365 thing. I stopped caring about and looking after MS domains in 2005, so I don't know in detail how all this MS stuff really works any more. I can't say I have had any problems using office today when I have needed to though.
Personally I am not reliant on Microsoft at all or any other provider for that matter, everything that I need for my own business is local. I been messing with computers for a few days now so it is cheaper, safer and more convenient for me to employ myself to run my own servers on my own hardware.
TBH, I don't care what the OS or the office suite is... I just want it to work and be available when I need it. That's why I don't use MS for my personal shit.
"Oh for fuck's sake, Bob! I just did the Days Since Last Outage sign"
Reminds me of an episode of Futurama in which Fry updates the "Days Since Last Accident" sign by nailing a piece of paper with a "1" on it to the sign. Immediately after he finishes putting up the "1" he realizes that he put the nail through his thumb.
when will heads roll at MS?
when will MS admit that their systems are shite?
when will MS start paying compensation to customers who are crippled by this sort of thing which seems to be getting more and more frequent?
and
When will customers start realising that MS is playing fast and loose with their companies data and possibly the future of the company and give them the really big finger...?
Sadly, the answer to all of the above is never.
The answer is when a major client sues for breach of contract with some eye-watering damages that is a certainty to win. An alternate scenario is when a couple of major clients like the EU governments ditch Bloat and associated cruft very loudly and noisily. If it is a government, they start mandating that all office type documents be ODF formats only. Until then, nothing will happen.
My Exchange email still not working, after telling me my box is full. I can receive emails okay, but not send them. Damn nuisance. Now I can only send or reply to emails via my AOL, which only works on my iPhone, having refused to work on my Mac for two years, despite every effort.. I may have to revert to sending letters by post.