Slack down: Chat app suggests fix as services begins to resume after worldwide outage

(Getty Images)

Slack has gone down in a global outage that has arrived just as many people are heading back to work.

The technical issues have left people unable to send or receive messages.

And they arrive as people across the world rely more heavily on the app to communicate with colleagues as they work from home.

[4 January 2021 17:53 · Andrew Griffin]

Slack says problems still remain – but users continue to report service coming back

Looks like everything is fixed, or getting there. Anecdotal experiences, tracking websites like Down Detector and my own personal use suggest that it is back online.

The Slack status page says it’s still broken, however. There may still be some issues, or it might just be slow to update – it didn’t register the outage straight away when it started, either.

[4 January 2021 17:33 · Andrew Griffin]

Slack suggests fix for those affected by outage

In its latest update, Slack suggests the issues are still ongoing but says some people might be able to fix them with a refresh. Here’s the full thing:

“While the issue is largely still ongoing, we believe some customers may see improvement in connecting to Slack after a refresh (CTRL/CMD + R).”

(Even though refreshing like that would normally be something associated with the web version, the way Slack is built means that pressing those key combinations should work on the desktop client, too.)

[4 January 2021 17:19 · Andrew Griffin]

Slack appears to be coming back to life

If The Independent’s experience is anything to go by, Slack is coming back online. Both me and my colleagues (including ones in the US) are now seemingly able to send and receive messages.

[4 January 2021 17:09 · Andrew Griffin]

Slack has posted an update – but with nothing to update

In keeping with its promise to keep users informed every 30 minutes, the latest update has arrived, but nothing much seems to have changed.

Here it is in full:

"There are no changes to report as of yet. We're still all hands on deck and continuing to dig in on our side. We'll continue to share updates every 30 minutes until the incident has been downgraded."

[4 January 2021 16:47 · Andrew Griffin]

Outage comes as people head back into work

Numerous people online are noting  – with either glee or frustration – that this comes after what for many was a two week holiday.

And some are suggesting they’ll take it as an indication that they should have one more day of

[4 January 2021 16:44 · Andrew Griffin]

Microsoft Teams still working as normal

Other messaging services seem to be working as normal. Microsoft Teams is still up and running without any apparent issues (as numerous people are joking about on Twitter…).

[4 January 2021 16:39 · Andrew Griffin]

Slack status page turns into a wall of red

If you’d prefer the outage shown as an image, rather than me describing it, here’s Slack’s status page:

(Slack)

[4 January 2021 16:37 · Andrew Griffin]

Posts suggest Slack is not aware of cause of outage

Slack has posted three times on its update page about the outage – but all of them suggest it’s still not clear what has gone wrong.

In the latest post, the company said that “all hands are on deck to further investigate”.

About an hour ago, it said that it was still investigating but had nothing to share.

And when it first recognised the outage, more than 90 minutes ago now, it also said it had no information but would follow up.

[4 January 2021 16:34 · Andrew Griffin]

Slack ‘updates the severity’

Until 10 minutes ago, Slack’s server status page was yellow, and indicated that some people might have some issues sending messages.

It is now covered in red, after the company “updated the severity" of the incident.

Here’s the latest update in full:

"We're continuing to investigate connection issues for customers, and have upgraded the incident on our side to reflect an outage in service. All hands are on deck on our end to further investigate. We'll be back in a half hour to keep you posted."

[4 January 2021 16:30 · Andrew Griffin]

Hello and welcome

…. to The Independent’s live coverage of the global Slack outage, which has left workplaces across the world unable to function properly.