Microsoft is currently investigating a widespread outage in its Microsoft 365 services, primarily affecting Microsoft Teams and causing call failures. The disruption, which started more than an hour ago, has been reported by hundreds of users on Downdetector, an online outage monitoring service. Many affected users are also experiencing authentication issues, making it difficult to access various Microsoft 365 applications.
In a service alert (TM1022107) issued in the Microsoft 365 admin center, Microsoft acknowledged the problem, stating: “Users may not be able to receive calls placed through Microsoft Teams-provisioned auto attendants and call queues.”
The company is currently analyzing service telemetry and call metadata to better understand the cause of the outage and determine the next steps for resolution. However, Microsoft has not yet specified which regions are affected or provided details about the root cause of the issue.
Broader Impact Beyond Microsoft Teams
Although Microsoft initially reported that the outage was limited to Teams’ calling features, user reports indicate a much wider impact. Several customers have mentioned experiencing difficulties accessing:
- Outlook (email access issues)
- OneDrive (file storage access problems)
- Exchange (email authentication issues)
- SharePoint (document collaboration disruptions)
- Bing (search engine connectivity problems)
One affected user stated:
“It affects multiple services, including Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, Bing, and so on. So, it’s bigger than this.”
Another user reported issues specifically with Apple’s native Mail app, saying:
“Can only access Outlook and Teams via mobile, and my 365 emails only load through the Outlook app. It won’t work on Apple’s native mail app.”
Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Canada
Microsoft has confirmed that customers in Canada are experiencing authentication and connectivity issues while trying to access multiple Microsoft 365 services, including Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, and the Microsoft 365 admin center.
This follows another major outage over the weekend, during which Microsoft 365 services—Outlook, Exchange Online, Teams, and Power Platform—experienced degraded functionality. That incident was later traced to a coding issue in a recent update to Microsoft’s authentication systems.
Additionally, a separate issue last week caused a widespread authentication failure for customers using Seamless SSO and Microsoft Entra Connect Sync. Microsoft linked that outage to a DNS configuration change.
Resolution and Service Restoration
As of March 3, 16:53 EST, Microsoft announced that it had identified the root cause of the issue and successfully deployed a fix.
“We’ve identified a recent change that inadvertently caused impact to auto attendant and call queues. We’ve deployed a fix to restore service,” Microsoft stated in an update.
Following continuous monitoring, the company confirmed that the affected services have successfully recovered. Users should now be able to make calls through Microsoft Teams and access other Microsoft 365 applications without disruptions.
However, Microsoft will provide a full post-incident report detailing the exact cause of the outage and steps taken to prevent similar issues in the future.
Final Thoughts
This is just the latest in a series of Microsoft 365 outages affecting users worldwide. While the company has been quick to deploy fixes, repeated issues raise concerns about reliability and stability. Organizations relying on Microsoft 365 for critical business operations may need to consider backup communication tools to mitigate potential downtime in the future.
Users who are still experiencing problems should restart their devices and check the Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard for real-time updates.