Microsoft Teams is down, affecting remote workers and online education (Update: It's back)

What you need to know

• Microsoft Teams is down for many people across Europe.
• The outage is at a bad time since many people will work from home this week due to coronavirus.
• Microsoft is investigating the issue.

Updated March 16, 2020: Microsoft states on Twitter that the issue has been mitigated. A Microsoft spokesperson also reached out to us to say "We've resolved an issue that may have impacted a subset of customers in Europe."

Microsoft Teams is down for many users across Europe. The Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account posted about the outage early this morning, stating that Microsoft is investigating messaging-related functionality problems. According to Downdetector the issues are primarily in Europe, though there are are few areas in North America, Africa, and Asia with issues.

No outage is good for an online service, but this one has particularly bad timing because many people will work from home this week due to coronavirus (COVID-19). Many people plan to work from home this week to reduce the risk of spreading the virus, including online workers, educators, and students. The Verge points out that some schools in the Netherlands asked students to use Microsoft Teams today to ask digital questions.

Microsoft Teams will likely receive heavy usage this week due to remote working and education, so Microsoft will have to make sure the service can handle the increased workload. There's a chance that the current outage is caused by increased demand for the service, though Microsoft has not stated the cause of the outage at this time. We'll update this article with any details Microsoft reveals on the current outage.

This is the second major outage for Microsoft Teams this year, though the first one happened because Microsoft forgot to renew an SSL security certificate.