On Thursday, November 12, 2026, Microsoft 365 experienced a major service disruption affecting businesses across the country, including many of our clients right here in Wichita.
What Happened
Starting in the afternoon, users began reporting they couldn’t connect to several core Microsoft 365 services, including:
- Exchange Online (email)
- Microsoft Teams
- SharePoint Online
- Microsoft Copilot 365
- Microsoft Defender XDR
- Microsoft Planner
- Microsoft To Do
Because Exchange Online was impacted, many organizations, including ours, couldn’t rely on email to notify clients. That’s why Enegren Technology shared live updates through our social media channels and Google Business Profile while the outage was active.
What Microsoft Said
According to Microsoft’s status updates, the outage didn’t appear to be tied to a specific recent change. Their engineering team identified that failed health checks might be originating from a specific component on affected servers responsible for processing them. They deployed a targeted fix to a subset of servers to test whether it would restore service, while also working to prevent additional servers from being pulled offline and investigating elevated processor usage on the affected systems.
Full technical updates were posted at status.cloud.microsoft.
What This Means for Your Business
Outages like this are a reminder that even the largest cloud providers aren’t immune to downtime. When core services like email and Teams go down, it can bring daily operations to a halt. A few questions worth asking after an event like this:
- How would my team communicate if email went down? Have a backup channel (phone, text, alternate app) ready.
- Is critical client communication documented somewhere outside Microsoft 365? Status pages, social media, and SMS can fill the gap.
- Do I have visibility into outages before my team notices something’s wrong? Proactive monitoring catches issues early, even ones outside your own network.
How Enegren Technology Helps
As a 100% local, family-owned managed IT and security provider, Enegren Technology monitors our clients’ systems around the clock, including the health of the cloud services they depend on. When something like this happens, we’re already watching, communicating, and working the problem instead of waiting for a ticket to come in.
If your business was affected by this outage, or if you want to talk about building more resilience into your IT environment, give us a call. We’re local, we’re responsive, and we’re here when it matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. This outage was a service-wide infrastructure issue on Microsoft’s end, not a breach of your individual account or organization. There’s no evidence this was related to a security incident.
Outage duration varies by service and region. Microsoft posted live updates throughout the event at status.cloud.microsoft check that page for the most current resolution status.
If your IT provider’s email also runs on Microsoft 365, as many businesses’ does, their email was likely down too. That’s why Enegren Technology communicated updates via social media and our Google Business Profile, and why we recommend every business keep a non-email backup contact method on file.
Check the Microsoft 365 status page first to confirm it’s a known outage, not an isolated issue on your end. Then reach out to your IT provider by phone, text, or another non-email channel, and avoid making account or password changes until Microsoft confirms services are restored.
Not entirely. This was a Microsoft service outage, not a local connectivity issue, so backup internet wouldn’t have restored M365 access. However, having redundant communication channels (SMS alerts, a secondary email domain, or a backup phone line) can keep your team connected to clients and each other even when a core platform like Microsoft 365 is down.
Yes. As part of our managed IT and security services, we monitor the health of the cloud platforms our clients depend on, so we can communicate issues and next steps quickly, even when standard channels like email are affected.