Microsoft blames Outlook's wobbly weekend on 'problematic code change'

This weekend's Microsoft 365 outage, which left unlucky subscribers unable to login and use its Outlook email service as expected, has been blamed on a "problematic code change" by the Windows giant. The problems for Redmond, and its paying customers, started at around 2100 UTC on Saturday. At least 30,000 Outlook users …

[Omnipresent]

Well,

They never once got email working, but if they want to blame it on some kid with open ai, I'll allow it.

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: Well,

Perhaps a Tween from DoGE pulled the wrong cable at a CoLo ?

[kmorwath]

Re: Well,

"Our AI trainer ate your messages and refused spitting them back - please move to our new Outlook so we can have even more emails to eat"

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

On the bright side...

"ome of those looking to enjoy start-of-the-week Teams meeting to catch up with coworkers were stymied and unable to use the system"

So...not all bad news

[David 132]

Re: On the bright side...

I've had several Teams meetings with colleagues so far today (US West Coast). As you can imagine, I am overjoyed to report that Teams worked and the meetings went ahead without issue.

Still, someone at Microsoft should be keel-hauled, if only for their mangling of the defenceless English language. "Problematic"? "Potential cause of impact"? Ugh.

[richdin]

Re: On the bright side...

Keel-hauling is great, but I'm still partial to Tar & Feathering!

[Tim99]

Re: On the bright side...

Why not both?

[Giles C]

Re: On the bright side...

Depends on the order as you don’t want to pollute the oceans any more….

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: On the bright side...

"Problematic"

Is perfectly good British English as well. I've used it even before the foul US-ification of the beautiful mess that is English..

[Mr Humbug]

Re: On the bright side...

The Teams problem is Auto attendants and Call Queues. Only affects Teams telephony, meetings should be fine.

Of course if all your inbound calls go to an Auto attendant then your customers are out of luck if they want to call you.

[cyberdemon]

Re: On the bright side...

So Borkzilla accidentally applied an internal policy update world-wide?

[Mr Humbug]

Re: On the bright side...

The incident says:

We've discovered that a modification to an auto attendant application ID record is rejecting Microsoft Teams call queues. We've deployed a fix to update the affected application ID record, which will mitigate impact.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: On the bright side...

"unable to use the system as hoped."

Idiosyncratic use of hope I'd 'a thought. Dreaded would have more representative, I suspect.

When I first observed Teams being used in the workplace (fortunately immediately before entering the Elysian Fields of retirement), my instant and peculiar thought was this is Guss Hedges and GlobeLink News. Of course that utterly unrealistic satire has long been overtaken by even more appalling reality.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: On the bright side...

immediately before entering the Elysian Fields of retirement

I'm jealous. Got 6 years and 360 days to go..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: On the bright side...

"my instant and peculiar thought was this is Guss Hedges and GlobeLink News."

"Let's run that idea up the flagpole and see who salutes"? lol

[AlanSh]

It's not quite fixed

I was one of those who suffered. When it did come back, all my signatures had gone. Of course, I'd stored them on the server.

Yuck!

[UnknownUnknown]

Re: It's not quite fixed

Enjoy the anonymity.

[IglooDame]

Yep, about 5hrs of no calls getting through on phone attendant/queue-controlled lines.

From M$, preliminary root case: "A configuration change to an auto-attendant app ID record that matches inbound calls with users in call queues."

[Linker3000]

The day has a 'Y' in it.

I swear that pretty much every time I check in on a Microsoft 365 outage they end up rolling back a change.

Does that say something about their test / release competency?

[ecofeco]

Re: The day has a 'Y' in it.

Yes, it says they STILL haven't gotten their shit together after 30 years.

[Lee D]

Re: The day has a 'Y' in it.

They don't care.

You're the tester because you (or your business) still keep paying for the software and won't move to any alternative because it's not "industry-standard". They stopped caring 20+ years ago, because they know you aren't going to leave Windows + Office no matter what they do.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: The day has a 'Y' in it.

"test / release"

The expression seems to be only semi-applicable.

[PM.]

Oh, and my old trusty classic Outlook 2016 worked all this time without a hitch ! What gives ?? ;-)

[EricB123]

low tech

Back to morse code and carrier pigeons

[Rich 2]

problematic code change

Why are there ANY code changes to a codebase that must be pushing 30 years old by now (older?)

Why is MS software so utterly shite that MS feel the need to twiddle with the code every month?

[collinsl]

Re: problematic code change

1. I'm sure Exchange in O365 is not that old, perhaps that's what was changed? Desktop Outlook is of course that old but I'm sure it's been rewritten almost completely by now.

2. All maintained code gets updated on a regular basis to try and squash bugs and work out problems, or when security issues are identified. That's what marks it out as maintained, vs abandoned code.

[Tron]

This is a paid for service, so how much compensation is being paid out?

Just kidding.