First the question: is it us or Microsoft?
When there's a problem with email or Teams, the temptation is to start fixing things straight away: restarting laptops, re-entering passwords, reinstalling Outlook. If Microsoft itself has an outage, none of that helps and it only costs time. The reverse is also true: if you wait for Microsoft while the problem is in your own environment, you're waiting for nothing. That's why the first step is always to check whether there's a known outage.
Service health in the admin center
In the Microsoft 365 admin center you'll find the Service health page under Health. The admin center home page also has a card showing whether there's an active issue. On the page you see:
- The status of each service. For example Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online and Office for the web, with an icon if something is wrong.
- Active issues Microsoft is working on. Click the title to see which services are affected, what the user impact is and all updates Microsoft has posted so far.
- Issues for your organization to act on. This section only appears if Microsoft has detected something in your own environment that needs action.
- History. Resolved incidents and advisories from the last 7 or 30 days. Useful to see afterwards what was going on.
Besides global admins, people with a more limited role, such as Helpdesk admin or Service Support admin, can also view Service health. So you don't need to give everyone full admin rights. Also read why you keep the number of admin accounts limited.
Incident or advisory: what's the difference?
Microsoft uses two types of notices. An advisory means some users are affected, but the service is still available. There is often a workaround. An incident is more serious: the service or a major function of it isn't working, for example because users can't send or receive email or can't sign in. A notice also shows its status, such as investigating, restoring service or service restored.
The notices are written in English. If your preferred language is set to another language, you can have them translated automatically with a toggle on the page.
When the admin center itself isn't working
Sometimes an outage is so large that you can't get into the admin center. For that, Microsoft has a public status page: status.cloud.microsoft. It's updated when admins can't reach Service health. In addition, Microsoft posts updates on major outages via the @MSFT365Status account on X. Put both links in your IT incident plan, so everyone knows where to look.
No outage listed? Then keep looking
If nothing is listed on Service health, the problem is probably closer to home. Think of the internet connection, a single laptop, an expired password or a setting in your own environment. If a specific email doesn't arrive, use message trace. If one employee suddenly can't sign in or strange things happen in their mailbox, rule out that the account has been compromised.
Still think it's Microsoft, but nothing is listed? Then on the Service health page you can fill in a short form via Report an issue. Microsoft compares it with reports from other organizations and adds it to the page if the problem is on their side.
Hear about it before the first colleague calls
You don't have to keep checking yourself. Via Customize on the Service health page you set up email notifications for new incidents and advisories. You choose which services you want to hear about and enter up to two email addresses per admin. Add your IT partner's address, for example. Note: planned maintenance and announced changes aren't shown on Service health but in the Message center. Combine it with alert policies for notifications about suspicious activity in your own environment.
How Floor ICT handles it
Floor ICT receives the Service health notifications for your environment and keeps an eye on active incidents. If Microsoft has an outage, we let you know what's going on and whether there's a workaround, so your employees don't all start searching themselves. If no outage is listed, we look for the problem in your own environment and report it to Microsoft if needed. How quickly we respond is set out in our SLA agreements. That way, when something breaks, you know within minutes where you stand.