Slack down: Office chat app goes down as people arrive back at work

Slack has stopped working properly, just as many people head back into their real and virtual offices after the break.

Users were unable to reliably send or receive messages, with chats appearing to work and then getting stuck. Text would appear to send but then show as grey within the chat, indicating that it had not actually been delivered.

:: Follow the latest live updates on the outage here.

Tracking website Down Detector showed a spike in reports of problems with the messaging app.

Some parts of Slack’s website also appeared to be inaccessible.

But the company’s official Twitter account and server status page did not immediately register any issues.

It was later updated to make clear the company was aware of the issue and working on a fix.

“Customers may experience issues connecting to Slack to loading channels at this time. Our team is on the case and we will keep you posted,” Slack wrote on Twitter. "Apologies for any disruption."

The company did not give any indication that it was aware of the cause of the issue, or any indication of when it might be back online.

Slack – along with competitors such as Zoom and Microsoft’s Teams suite – have become a central part of working through lockdown, as workplaces look to allow their staff to communicate while being discouraged from going into offices.

That means that any outage can have immediate and considerable effect, with employees unable to communicate as usual.