Microsoft says it is recording early signs of stability and improved service capacity as it expands traffic optimisation measures across regions affected by a major Microsoft 365 outage.
In its latest update, the technology giant said the recovery actions were producing positive results, but cautioned that it was still working towards persistent recovery as it seeks to restore normal service.
Microsoft has also extended the email timeout period to 48 hours to help preserve delayed messages while recovery efforts continue.
Recovery actions expanded
The company said it was applying its latest traffic management actions more widely after observing improved server stability and increased capacity in areas where the measures had been introduced.
The response involves redirecting and optimising traffic, restoring affected servers and monitoring their performance before expanding the measures to other regions.
Microsoft said the actions are meant to ease pressure on infrastructure affected by the incident and gradually improve availability for users reconnecting to its services.
However, the company stopped short of declaring the incident resolved, saying it was still monitoring the results as recovery work continues.
Microsoft’s public service-health dashboard continued to list service degradation affecting Microsoft 365 business and enterprise services, as well as consumer products.
Delayed emails protected for longer
A key part of the latest update is the extension of the email timeout window to 48 hours.
The measure is intended to give delayed emails a longer delivery window as Microsoft works to stabilise its systems, reducing the risk of messages expiring while infrastructure capacity is being restored.
Users may therefore experience delays in sending, receiving or accessing emails as the recovery process continues.
Microsoft said it was prioritising service stability, traffic flow and capacity improvements to protect mail queues and enable services to recover in a controlled manner.
The company has directed administrators to incident reference MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin centre for detailed updates. Users unable to access the admin centre can monitor the public service-health page at status.cloud.microsoft.
Cause still under investigation
Microsoft has said its investigation found that a process on affected servers responsible for establishing secure connections was becoming overwhelmed, causing some servers to stop processing requests.
The failure of servers and automated health checks placed additional pressure on remaining infrastructure, triggering connectivity problems across multiple Microsoft services.
The company has said there is no indication so far that the incident was caused by malicious activity.
The outage has affected users globally, with disruptions reported across Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services.
Microsoft says it will continue expanding recovery measures as it works towards full restoration and has promised a more comprehensive post-incident report once the outage has been resolved.
