Microsoft 365 outage knocks down Teams, Exchange Online

​An Azure Active Directory outage is preventing users from logging into Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, Forms, Xbox Live, and Yammer.

Starting at approximately 3:34 PM EST, users began reporting being unable to login to their Microsoft 365 accounts, Microsoft Teams, or access other Microsoft apps.

It appears @Microsoft365 is having a few issues at the moment; currently unable to access Forms. Hopefully back up soon for my @syscouts quiz on tree recognition

— James Garnett (@jamesmgarnett) March 15, 2021

MicrosoftTeams is down? not able to connect to any meeting MSFT365Status https://t.co/GSa7qv1IZE #MicrosoftTeams #Microsoft #Microsoft365 Translated using #MicrosoftFlow

— Daniel Villamizar -Microsoft Azure MVP (@CSA_DVillamizar) March 15, 2021

The outage is also affecting Microsoft sites, such as the Tech Community web site, as users are not able to log into the site.

"As a result of the issues currently facing Azure AAD, we are currently experiencing problems on the Microsoft Tech Community with login and authentication. This will result in users being unable to login and users already logged in getting unexpected errors as sessions timeout," posted a Microsoft Tech Community manager.

Microsoft has acknowledged the outage in the Microsoft 365 incident report MO244568, which states the outage initially impacted Microsoft Teams but is now affecting other services.

"Initial reports indicate that primary impact is to Microsoft Teams; however, other services including Exchange Online and Yammer are also impacted."

"We're investigating a potential issue and checking for impact to your organization. We'll provide an update within 30 minutes," the outage report states.

Microsoft has confirmed that the widespread outages affecting Microsoft's online services are the result of an Azure Active Directory (AAD) configuration issue. This issue is preventing users from authenticating to Microsoft 365, Exchange, Online, Microsoft Teams, or any other service relying on AAD.

"Starting at approximately 19:15 UTC on 15 Mar 2021, a subset of customers may experience issues authenticating into Microsoft services, including Microsoft Teams, Office and/or Dynamics, Xbox Live, and the Azure Portal," reads the Azure status page.

Microsoft is sharing updates on their Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account, with the final update associated with this outage shown below:

The majority of services Impacted by MO244568 have recovered, with the exception of Intune and Microsoft Managed Desktop, which are now being communicated under IT244611 and MG244657 respectively. More details can be found in the admin center.

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) March 16, 2021

Update 3/15/21 4:48 PM: The outage is confirmed to be caused by an Azure Active Directory issue. Article updated with this information.
Update 3/16/21 8:15 AM: Added final status update.