An important part of troubleshooting issues with Office 365 is confirming the service is healthy. While most problems are related to single users or configurations, outages occasionally happen. While this article isn’t some of my more groundbreaking content, I often get asked how I monitor outages & health in Office 365. When people complain something is not working, I am sometimes “that person” that quickly has an advisory link on an issue. It will save you a lot of time (and make you look good) to know about these issues when they pop up.
Early on in your troubleshooting of issues, it is good to peak at the status page and confirm you are not wasting your time. In time you get a feel for when that little message goes off in your head to check this. For me, this is when:
- “Page cannot be displayed” is seen
- Users cannot join a Microsoft Teams meeting, or some aspect of Microsoft Teams is not working in both the desktop & mobile app
- Login issues, particularly for new login sessions
- API issues
When you want to check the status of Office 365, you can look at it in your Admin portal. This Health App is customized to your region.
- Go to https://admin.microsoft.com
- Log in with an account that has Global Admin or Service Support Admin Role
- Click on the Admin applet
- On the left-hand menu, select Health and then Service Health
At any given time, there are usually some advisories or incidents listed. Look for the most recent symptoms of your issue and then dive into the details of older ones that may be impacting your exact problem.
You may be asking: What happens if no one can log in, or the admin portal itself is down? Microsoft has a special website for this situation. Go to https://status.office365.com/. This site will provide you with information on any incidents that may impact your ability to log in to system Health or if the ystem Health App is unavailable.
A final tip for all Microsoft 365 administrators is to follow @MSFT365Status on Twitter. I have this set to alert me to anything that posts. I admit this is usually the first place I see outages these days.
