UPDATE: Microsoft Teams appears to have recovered from several major outages on Monday 16 March - original story below
Users are reporting major outages in Microsoft Teams as the world starts a new era of working from home.
The online collaboration tool was set to face severe strain today as millions of workers around the world begin a stint of logging in remotely after the coronavirus outbreak shut down offices globally.
However many users claimed issues with Teams, suffering downtime and outages throughout the day.
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Microsoft Teams outage
Figures from online outage service Downdetector saw spikes in complaints concerning Microsoft Teams as 9am GMT, as most of the UK and European workforces came online, 3pm GMT - as much of the US signed in.
"We're investigating messaging-related functionality problems within Microsoft Teams," the official Microsoft 365 support Twitter account wrote earlier today, having faced a barrage of messages.
Microsoft announced two weeks ago that it would be offering free access to its teleconferencing suite in order to help businesses and schools continue operating in spite of the global coronavirus outbreak.
The company is currently offering a six-month free trial of Microsoft Teams, with the premium tier of the service, which was initially available in China with certain limitations, also now available to users globally. Since March 10, Microsoft has also removed member restrictions in Teams and will let users schedule video calls and conferences.
Rival Google is also providing free access to the advanced Hangouts meeting service to all G-Suite and G-Suite for Educations customers across the globe.
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