Microsoft Teams outage widens to take out M365 services, admin center 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 …
The fun bit with this "new normal" way of working is to see meetings where several of you are in the office engaged in the same meeting - via Skype (we still use Skype - it's better, and due to being internally hosted for us, more secure). It's also irritating to be able to hear the lag between when you hear one of the louder spoken people talk directly across the office, and when you hear them in the meeting.
I am amazed how decades ago one could communicate with people on a machine as powerful as current calculators, without slowdowns, lags, nothing.
Then today Teams can bring down a computer being an equivalent of a supercomputer decades ago.
It is also interesting that many data centres ban IRC traffic and installation of IRC servers is forbidden.
Could this be a result of lobbying from companies that try to shove Teams like garbage down our throats?
My previous employer, a Scottish university, decided not to replace the ageing Cisco VoIP phone system but that everyone would then be using Teams on their PC/laptop for any voice comms. Thankfully I am out of there now but can imagine the amusement this would have caused.
I think their argument about the loss of emergency / 999 call facilities was everyone has a mobile phone these days. Hopefully that will never end up being tested in court.
My employer did the same. There has been no actual phone hardware (except mandatory headsets) for 2 years now.
Every single employee will tell you this was the best thing ever. The company was ready for covid/homeoffice from day one. Worldwide collaboration massively improved and it got "teams" actually closer together. In the time we had maybe 2 or 3 actual outages and one incident where calls to the POTS had bad quality. Not a Microsoft fan, I'm actually a Mac user at work (and Linux at home). I also hate the app because it is much slower than it should be. It is still the best office communication tool I have seen so far.
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try literally any other collaboration tool.
You'll find that Lync For business AKA teams, is clunky resource hogging and lacking in functionality
Webex, Zoom and Slack are the big guys, but a myriad of smaller providers provide similar or better services at a better quality.
The problem is, as with Excel, "Everyone" uses it, and it's "free" (Included) with your O365 costs, so the PHB and finance wonks, refuse to pay for something that's better because it is good enough...
Mine did the same, except the cell tower is 12 miles away, so it's "well you can get a text... in 20 minutes or so... if you point the phone the right direction... or maybe not at all"
Edit: old chestnut "That's why I love VoIP. You don't get people phoning up to complain that the network is down."
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.
Need I remind everyone of this? It was not that long ago...
https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/08/canada_rogers_outage/
Everything can fail when some engineer has a whoops moment...
Yes.
It highlights how the whole MS ecosystem is a stack of half-baked code, sitting on other half baked code, relying on other half baked code - all replicated millions of times around the world such that I suspect there is no-one in MS who still has a clue how the whole fragile edifice works. It's "interesting" to try logging connections when signing into any of the MS stable of bloatware - to see how your auth relies on being bounced from server to server all over the world (and putting paid to the lies about "local data storage out fo the reach of other countries"). And when just one of those servers breaks, it creates problems for users all over the world - see previous ElReg reports on the various MS outages.
Teams is layers and layers of lipstick, on a circus act of pigs doing the "build a porcine pyramid while riding bikes".
Well....
In the flats where I live in the UK we lost the TV signal for the entire block for best part of a week a while back.
Why?
Some utter moron twat of a Sky "engineer" came to install a Sky Q upgrade for someone. He needed a 13A socket to plug his shiny new shit into - oh none free.
Rather than go to his van to get a short mains extension block out to create some more sockets (not great but it is all low current stuff) he just unplugged something else. His shiny new shitty Sky Q was working so he duly fucked off.
Leaving the entire communal terrestrial aerial distribution system fucked with no power until the landlord called in the company that maintained the system. Fixed in 10 miniutes, entirely avoidable and all because of some Sky "fuckwit" so-called "engineer".
At which point, the action should be to send a large bill to Sky to cover both the cost of the call out and compensation for all the affected users.
I expect the management company won't have the gumption to do that, or the balls to follow up on it - and if they did, Sky would spend more effort finding excuses why "not my problem guv" than it would cost them to say "oops, sorry - hears a little something by way of an apology". Meanwhile, the clueless f'wit who thinks that's an OK thing to do will carry on with no comeback.
The landord did get a full report fom the proper AV company which came and (very quickly) sorted it out (they maintain the communal TV distribution system).
The landlord came to the same conclusion though - was it worth the hassle with Sky and would they get anything worthwile out of it, probably not.
I'd be looking at it more from the PoV that while I might not get anything out of it, I'd done my bit in terms of making it a problem for Sky when their engineerstechnicians screw up other people's systems. IN this case, by being just plain f'ing ignorant, the tech has caused problems for many people - and will suffer exactly zero comeback for being an ignorant sh*t.
But for that to change means that everyone with an issue like this needs to make it an issue for Sky - only then with Sky bother making it an issue for their technicians who pull this sort of stunt.
But then, I'm working towards a masters in the Grumpy Old Gits university.
In the absence of 'Teams', and (as noted above) telephonicular* communications. How about time for a nice cup of tea, and spot of peace and relaxation?
Close your eyes
Sit up straight,
Relax the neck, shoulders and chest.
Extend the arms upwards, outwards and then let them fall gently to the vertical (avoid hitting workplace proximity associates and furniture if possible), allowing the shoulder blades to lie flat against the back.
Inhale deeply through the nose using the diaphragm
Hold that breath for at least 10 seconds.
Exhale gently again through the nose.
Wait 10 seconds at least.
Repeat breathing exercise.
Listen to the peace and calm of a work environment uncluttered by unnecessary conversation.
Repeat breathing exercises until bored. (Or until your local PHB interrupt with 'What the %^&* are you doing?'.)
There now, doesn't that feel better?
*Copyright Eclectic Man 2022
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The worst part of it is that I didn't find out until I started my work day and saw the internal notification emails from our support team about it. Granted, there's exactly nothing I could have done about it, but getting informed would have been nice.
Not a peep from Microsoft at all, and I'm the admin for our tenant. :(
(Somehow the boss also knew, and when I speak with him today I'm going to ask if he got any notifications and if so, where he turned them on so I can do the same- I don't like getting blind sided by tripe like this.)
At work our office is being refurbished to make it less user friendly - at least that's how I interpret the plans.
I asked if there would be any desk phones - given that sometimes we need the IT helpdesk to be able to contact us while troubleshooting problems. I got the answer that there will be no desk phones as we all have Skype - neatly missing the point that when our IT isn't working, and we're waiting for a response from the helpdesk (even if it's only to say they've finished their remote work and we can log in again), then Skype isn't an option - and we're not allowed mobiles in the office either.
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