? Understanding Microsoft 365 Service Health
When troubleshooting issues within Microsoft 365 — such as problems with Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, or Exchange — it's important to determine whether the issue is local (within your environment) or part of a broader, known Microsoft service disruption.
Microsoft Service Health is a real-time dashboard within the Microsoft 365 Admin Center that provides detailed status updates on all Microsoft 365 services. It shows:
Current outages or incidents
Advisory-level issues (degraded service, but not fully offline)
Regional impact
Progress updates and resolution steps directly from Microsoft’s engineering team
? Why This Matters
Sometimes, the issue a user is experiencing isn’t caused by internal infrastructure or local configurations. It may be the result of a known service interruption or degradation on Microsoft’s side. Checking the Service Health Dashboard can save time and prevent unnecessary troubleshooting by immediately identifying external problems.
✅ How to Check Microsoft 365 Service Health
DIRECT LINK:
Microsoft Service Health Dashboard
(Requires Microsoft 365 admin credentials)
To navigate there: Microsoft Admin Portal > Health > Service Health
? How to Read the Dashboard
Each Microsoft 365 service (Teams, Exchange, SharePoint, etc.) will be listed with one of the following statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✅ Healthy | No issues reported by Microsoft |
| ⚠️ Advisory | Some features are degraded, but the service is mostly functional |
| ❌ Incident | A significant outage or disruption is affecting normal functionality |
| ? Restoring | Microsoft is actively rolling out a fix or mitigation |
| ✅ Resolved | The issue has been fully addressed and services are back to normal |
Clicking on a specific service or alert will provide additional details, including:
When the issue started
What regions are impacted
Microsoft’s ongoing investigation and mitigation efforts
Estimated time to resolution (if available)
? Pro Tip:
You can configure email or Teams notifications for health alerts under Health > Service Health > Preferences, so you’ll know immediately if Microsoft reports an issue.
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