[German]Currently there seems to be a problem with the Microsoft telephony service Skype for Business. The login doesn't seem to work, so that no phone calls can be made via Skype.
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Skype for Consumer and Skype for Business
Skype is the online chat, voice and video telephony service that was acquired by Microsoft in 2011 and then expanded. For historical reasons, there are the variants Skype for Consumer and Skype for Business (formerly Lynx).
Users can also send SMS messages with Skype. The Skype client software is available for desktop systems (Windows and macOS), as well as for smartphones and tablets under iPhone, iPad and Android. Microsoft merged Microsoft Messenger (also known as MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger) with Skype after taking over Skype in 2011.
Recently Microsoft announced, that Skype for Business will be become Teams (see Microsoft upgrades Skype for Business to Teams) and Skype for Buiness Online will be retired (see Skype for Business Online: To be retired at July 31, 2021).
Skype for Business downd
I don't use Skype for Business myself, but I can sign in to the Skype consumer web service. But German blog reader Axel H. has just sent me an email saying that he has problems with Skype for Business (thanks for that).
A brief information, there seems to be massive issues with Skype (for Business) at the moment. No login possible, so no chat's/Telco's…
There are no problems with teams… at the moment…
I checked German site allestörungen.de for Skype issues, and found the graph shown below. It seems that sind 2 hours some users are seeing a Skype outage, but it's declining.
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On the international website downdetector.com currently I can't see any significant error messages either for Skype nor for Skype for Business.
@MSFT365Status Skype for Business seems to be down in The Netherlands, cannot connect from different tenants.
— Tony Mels (@tmels) December 16, 2019
But I found the above tweet from the Netherlands, where a user claims also Skye4Business is down. There are confirmation from Asia, Belgium and Great Brittain as answers to the above tweet. Also here is a confirmation – seems to be worldwide – as you can see within this tweet adressung Brasil.
Sorry to hear that. We're not aware of any ongoing related issues. Our friends @OfficeSupport may be able to help. ^HM
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) December 16, 2019
Microsoft 365 Status reported a few hours ago that no problem was known. The German Skype status page (probably the consumer version) doesn't show anything either. Axel H. writes in his mail that Microsoft has registered the problem in the admin portal. Question: Is anyone affected? Is there any further information?
Addendum: Some reader send me the status messages from Admin portal (thanks for that):
Title: Can't perform write actions
User Impact: Users may be unable to perform certain write actions in Skype.
More info: Some of the scenarios impacted include but are not limited to;
Creating meetings, adding contacts, activating meetings, or creating groups.
Users are able to sign in to the Skype service, make or receive voice calls and send peer to peer messages.
Current status: We've identified a potential issue caused by maintenance work. We're reviewing mitigation options to resolve the issue.
Scope of impact: This issue could impact any user who is served through the affected infrastructure in Europe.
Next update by: Monday, December 16, 2019, at 12:30 PM UTC
Title: Can't sign in
User Impact: Users may be unable to sign in to the Skype service.
Current status: We're investigating a potential sign in issue with the Skype service. We'll provide an update within 30 minutes.
Scope of impact: Impact is specific to a users are served through the affected infrastructure in Europe."
>https://portal.office.com/servicestatus
And there is a post in Microsoft Answers forum with a reply from Microsoft. The last message I heared was, that Skype for Business seems up again here in Europe.
Similar articles:
Revised Skype for Web (March 2019)
Microsoft upgrades Skype for Business to Teams
Skype for Business Online: To be retired at July 31, 2021
"Title: Can't sign in
User Impact: Users may have been unable to sign in to the Skype service.
More info: Users already signed into the service were able to make or receive voice calls and send peer to peer messages, however, they may have been unable to perform certain write actions.
Some of the scenarios impacted for write actions included, but were not limited to;
Creating meetings, adding contacts, activating meetings, or creating groups.
Final status: We've determined that during maintenance work, a subset of networking systems was inadvertently removed from active service. Automated recovery features routed traffic to alternate components in resiliency mode, to limit further impact. We've brought the networking devices back into active rotation and reconnected user connections back to the original infrastructure, to remediate impact.
Scope of impact: This issue could have impacted any user who was served through the affected infrastructure in Europe.
Start time: Monday, December 16, 2019, at 9:48 AM UTC
End time: Monday, December 16, 2019, at 12:20 PM UTC
Preliminary root cause: Scheduled hardware maintenance procedures inadvertently prevented a section of service access devices from handling user requests, resulting in impact.
Next steps:
– We're reviewing our maintenance procedures to find ways to prevent this problem from happening again.
– We're reviewing our code for improved monitoring systems to reduce or avoid similar impact in the future.
– We're reviewing our network hardware topology configuration to ensure that maintenance will not cause this impact in the future.
We'll publish a post-incident report within five business days."
>https://portal.office.com/servicestatus