Microsoft has admitted its fix for a major outage isn’t working as planned, leaving schools, universities, businesses and governments without access to Outlook, Teams and Copilot hours after the problems began this morning.
"We’ve monitored the status of the changes applied to improve serviceability and confirmed that change is not taking as expected," the statement read. "We’re identifying alternate workstreams that can be applied to increase capacity in the face of sustained traffic management imbalances."
A spokesperson for the Victorian Department of Education said schools had largely dodged the fallout, with support on hand for those that needed it.
"The Victorian Government schools program is running as normal today, with minimal disruption caused by the global IT outage, and VCE exams unaffected," the spokesperson told The Educator.
"The department and VCAA communicated with schools this morning to ensure they have access to any necessary support and to emphasise that regular channels for reporting incidents and emergencies remain operational."
However, the picture looks different in some classrooms, where students say the outage has knocked out the communication channels their schools rely on most.
A student who spoke to the ABC today said the outage is having "a noticeable impact" on their school's communication systems, particularly Microsoft Teams and Outlook.
"We rely on these platforms for important updates from year-level staff and school leadership," the student said. "With exams taking place today, it's creating additional challenges for students in Years 10–12 who depend on these communications to receive important exam information and updates. Hopefully, Microsoft can get this resolved as quickly as possible."
Another student said their school, which runs "literally everything" through Microsoft 365, has been thrown into a tailspin by the outage.
"The teachers can't communicate with each other, we've all been struggling to get work done cause we couldn't access anything," the student said. "I feel so bad for all of the teachers and staff, I hope this gets resolved soon."