Microsoft had its corporate earnings call yesterday and posted weaker guidance. But guess what? Several hours later, the tech giant was hit by a networking outage that took down Azure and other services like Teams and Outlook, affecting millions of users globally.

The Situation: some employees are reporting that Microsoft Teams is not working properly. You wonder, is there a Microsoft outage today? You jump onto Twitter to check the Microsoft 365 status account and see a trail of updates regarding a Microsoft outage – ugh there is a lengthy Twitter thread. You are in the midst of managing a Microsoft outage today.

If you have been following the news over the last few months, you will agree that the buzzwords for this year are – inflation and recession. Yet, even in these turbulent times, delivering an excellent digital employee experience (DEX) remains an essential aspect of IT. As organizations continue to add various collaboration, communication, and end-user technologies to the mix, new problems will surface.

PowerApps is something of a revolution in the making – and Microsoft is keen to promote it for enterprises everywhere. Being able to create your own apps to serve specific business functions is a huge win for any company looking to drive efficiency. And now with Azure Communication Services (ACS), you can even integrate Teams features in your apps.

It’s a red alert for any IT team. Hearing the words “Microsoft Teams is down” can scare even the most experienced tech department. But, with a few clear definitions – and a way to spot outages and solve them – you’ll be well on your way to having a Microsoft Teams outage totally under control. Your organization now relies on Teams for nearly every aspect of business communication and collaboration.

You need ways to bring your distributed teams together. That’ll be one of the reasons that you chose Microsoft Teams. It’s a brilliant comms and collaboration platform for connecting your people. But, when it comes to classic telephony, does it stand up to the competition? Basically, yes. And here’s how. To be able to use Teams for traditional corporate telephony, businesses must link their Microsoft Phone System to a virtual PBX hosted by Microsoft in the cloud.

We always say we’ll stick by them, and then once early February rolls around we’ve probably long forgotten the promises we had made in the cold light of the new year. But, if you want to make your business’ Microsoft Teams service quality the best it can be – you need to make some changes (and stick to them).

Remote and hybrid work have made Microsoft Teams a core tool in nearly all large organizations. Many business leaders and IT administrators would like to extend the value of Teams to enable users to make and receive business phone calls. This improves the productivity of their employees by keeping them connected with customers, business partners, and co-workers in the office, at home, or even on the road.