Oops! Microsoft's enterprise-oriented Teams communication software has gotten better and better as of late. A couple of months ago, the software even made the jump to Linux, opening up its feature set to an entirely new userbase. However, as great as Teams is, it was inaccessible to many users for several hours this morning for reasons unknown (until later).
The service went down without warning, and many users were forced to find alternative ways to communicate with their peers. The timing was especially unfortunate as for most workers this morning marked the start of a new work week, when there are important meetings to hold and files to share.
Eventually we learned thanks to an announcement from Microsoft on Twitter why Teams went down: the company forgot to renew the service's SSL certificate.
That's a pretty low-tech problem for such a high-tech company to miss, but it's certainly not unprecedented. A few years back, Instagram made a similar mistake, as did Apple the year before.
We've determined that an authentication certificate has expired causing, users to have issues using the service. We're developing a fix to apply a new certificate to the service which will remediate impact. Further updates can be found under TM202916 in the admin center.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) February 3, 2020
Of course, simple mistake or not, the internet is certainly having a good laugh about the situation at Microsoft's expense.
"Hey Cortana, set a reminder for a year from now: "Renew the really important certificate," Twitter user Dinidu joked. Others took a more helpful approach, with user DTZach suggesting the following: "Can you let us know when the new certificate will expire? We will set a reminder and can inform you before it expires."
As much fun as it is to poke fun at Microsoft for their latest gaffe, the important takeaway here is that the certificate has been renewed, and Teams is functioning properly once again. Hopefully, Microsoft will take the advice of some of its users so this problem doesn't resurface again.
Masthead credit: Shutterstock
