Hey everyone! I'm interested in how you manage when online services like Gmail, Notion, or Microsoft 365 experience outages. I'm sure many of us have been there, so I'd love to hear about your strategies for coping with these situations. Do you have backup plans in place? What do you find to be the most annoying part of these outages? Looking forward to your thoughts!
5 Answers
The most frustrating part for me is definitely helping users understand that it’s not an internal issue. There was this massive global outage with 365 a while back, and I had an executive panicking because he couldn’t access email. I had to explain this was a Microsoft problem, not something I could quickly fix. The whole thing made me feel like I should be escalating things, but where can you even escalate with these huge companies?
You'd be surprised how many think you can just call Google or Microsoft and make the problem go away! I recently had a CEO insisting I talk to them directly!
In past outages, I’ve noticed having email continuity solutions like Barracuda helps a bit. They allow for some basic email functionality until the main service is back up. But still, no substitute for direct support from the provider when there’s a bigger issue!
My approach is to send out an alert that outlines what’s down, telling users it’s a vendor issue and we’re monitoring the progress. I wish I could have viable backups for everything, but let’s be honest—having backups for everything isn’t always feasible! Plus, you know someone’s going to ask if it’s your fault anyway.
I just keep everyone in the loop about the outage and remind them it’s out of my control. Sometimes I think it’d be nice if IT could just unplug the internet for a day so everyone understands the reliance we have on these services! It’s definitely a wake-up call.
Honestly, when these services go down, there’s really not much you can do. I typically just monitor the situation and keep everyone updated through Slack or teams if one is down. Communication is key. It also helps to remind everyone that relying solely on the cloud does have risks!
Haha, I should have just told him to email his congressman!