Ensuring the smooth operation of your business in today’s digital landscape heavily relies on the reliability of your cloud services. Microsoft 365, a cornerstone for many organizations, offers a suite of essential services like Office apps, Teams, Exchange Online, and Dynamics 365. To proactively manage and maintain productivity, understanding and utilizing 365 Health Services is crucial. This guide provides a detailed walkthrough on how to effectively monitor your Microsoft 365 service health, ensuring you’re always informed and prepared.
Microsoft 365 provides transparent insights into the operational status of its services through the Service health page within the Microsoft 365 admin center. This invaluable tool allows administrators to quickly assess the health of various services, including Office on the web, Microsoft Teams, Exchange Online, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Before contacting support or initiating troubleshooting for a cloud service issue, checking the service health dashboard is a vital first step. It helps determine if the problem is a known incident with Microsoft actively working on a resolution, saving you time and resources.
In situations where accessing the admin center itself is problematic, Microsoft offers alternative methods to check 365 health services. The service status page is a publicly accessible dashboard designed to report widespread issues that might prevent login to your tenant. Additionally, following @MSFT365status on X (formerly Twitter) provides real-time updates and information on significant service events, offering another layer of awareness for your 365 health services monitoring strategy.
Accessing Your Microsoft 365 Service Health Dashboard
To begin monitoring your 365 health services, accessing the Service health dashboard is straightforward through the Microsoft 365 admin center.
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Navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin center by opening your web browser and going to https://admin.microsoft.com. Log in using your administrator credentials.
Note: Access to service health information is role-based. Service Support administrators and Helpdesk administrators have the necessary permissions to view service health dashboards. For a comprehensive list of roles with service health access, refer to About admin roles in Microsoft 365.
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Once logged in, locate the Health section in the left-hand navigation menu. Expand Health and select Service health. Alternatively, you might find a Service health card directly on your Home dashboard. This dashboard card provides a quick overview, indicating if there are any active service issues and offers a direct link to the detailed Service health page.
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Upon accessing the Service health page, you’ll be presented with a comprehensive table displaying the health status of each Microsoft 365 cloud service.
The default Overview tab provides a consolidated view of all services, their current health status, and any ongoing incidents or advisories. The Health column utilizes icons and clear status indicators to represent the real-time condition of each service, making it easy to quickly grasp the overall 365 health services landscape.
Below the service overview, you’ll find two key sections:
- Issues for your organization to act on: This section is specifically tailored to highlight issues detected within your organization’s environment that require your immediate attention. If no action is needed from your side, this section will be hidden.
- Active issues Microsoft is working on: This section lists all current incidents and advisories that Microsoft is actively working to resolve, providing transparency into broader service disruptions.
For historical data, the Issue history tab provides a record of all resolved incidents and advisories from the past 7 or 30 days, allowing you to review past service events and trends within your 365 health services.
If you encounter a problem with a Microsoft 365 service that isn’t listed on the Service health page, you can proactively report it. By selecting Report an issue and filling out the brief form, you alert Microsoft to the potential problem. Microsoft will then analyze related data and reports from other organizations to assess the issue’s scope. If confirmed as a service-side incident, it will be added as a new incident or advisory on the Service health page, enabling you to track its resolution progress. The Reported issues tab will keep a record of all issues your tenant has reported via this form and their current status.
To customize your Service health dashboard view, allowing you to focus on the 365 health services most relevant to your organization, click Customize > Custom view. Here, you can deselect the checkboxes for services you wish to exclude from your dashboard view. Ensure that the checkbox remains selected for each service you want to actively monitor.
Stay informed about critical 365 health services events by setting up email notifications. Select Customize > Email, then check Send me email notifications about service health. You can specify up to two email addresses to receive these notifications. Further customize your alerts by choosing whether to receive notifications for incidents or advisories, and selecting the specific services you want to be notified about.
For granular control over notifications, you can also subscribe to email updates for individual service events. By selecting an active issue and clicking Manage notifications for this issue, you can designate up to two email addresses to receive updates specifically related to that event, ensuring you are promptly informed about progress and resolution.
Note: Each administrator can configure their own notification preferences, and the limit of two email addresses applies per administrator account.
Tip: For on-the-go monitoring of 365 health services, utilize the Microsoft 365 Admin app on your mobile device. The app provides access to Service health information and can send push notifications, keeping you updated even when you are away from your desktop.
Delving into Service Health Issue Details
To gain a deeper understanding of a specific service issue, navigate to the Active issues Microsoft is working on section and click on the title of the issue. This action will open the issue detail page, providing comprehensive information and a timeline of updates regarding the incident.
The advisory or incident summary at the top of the page presents key details:
- Title: A concise summary describing the service problem.
- ID: A unique numerical identifier assigned to the issue for tracking.
- Last updated: The timestamp indicating the most recent update to the service health message.
- Estimated start time: The approximate time when the issue began.
- Affected services: A list of Microsoft 365 services impacted by the issue.
- Issue type: Categorization of the issue as either an incident (critical) or advisory (less severe).
- Issue origin: Indicates whether the issue originated within Microsoft’s infrastructure or within a customer environment.
- Status: The current state of the issue (e.g., Investigating, Restoring service).
- User Impact: A brief explanation of how the issue affects end users.
- All Updates: A chronological feed of messages posted by Microsoft, providing progress updates, mitigation efforts, and resolution confirmations.
Language Translation for Service Health Information
Microsoft 365 health services dashboard offers a language translation feature to enhance accessibility. While service health posts are initially composed in English to ensure timely communication, they can be automatically translated into your preferred language configured in your Microsoft 365 settings. This machine translation functionality allows administrators to understand service health updates in their native language.
Understanding Service Health Definitions
The Service health dashboard uses specific terms and statuses to communicate the condition of 365 health services. Familiarizing yourself with these definitions is key to effectively interpreting the information provided.
Tip: Planned maintenance events are not displayed within the Service health dashboard. To stay informed about upcoming planned maintenance, regularly check the Message center. Filter messages by the “Plan for change” category to identify scheduled changes, their potential impact, and recommended preparation steps. Refer to Message center in Microsoft 365 for further details.
Incidents and Advisories: Distinguishing Severity Levels
| Icon | Description |
|---|---|
| Advisory: An advisory indicates that Microsoft is aware of a problem affecting some users, but the service remains available. Advisories often include workarounds, and the issue might be intermittent or limited in scope, with a contained user impact. | |
| Incident: An incident signifies a critical issue where a service or a major function is unavailable. This could mean users are unable to send/receive emails or sign in. Incidents have a significant and noticeable impact on users. During an incident, Microsoft provides regular updates on investigations, mitigation efforts, and resolution confirmation through the Service health dashboard. |
Service Status Definitions: Decoding the Current State
| Status | Definition |
|---|---|
| Investigating | Microsoft is aware of a potential issue and is actively gathering information to understand its nature and scope. |
| Service degradation | Confirmation of an issue that may affect service or feature performance. This could manifest as slower service, intermittent interruptions, or feature malfunctions. |
| Service interruption | Determination that an issue is preventing users from accessing the service. This indicates a significant and consistently reproducible problem. |
| Restoring service | The root cause has been identified, corrective action is determined, and the process of returning the service to a healthy state is underway. |
| Extended recovery | Corrective action is being implemented to restore service to the majority of users, but full restoration across all affected systems will take time. This status may also indicate a temporary fix is in place while a permanent solution is deployed. |
| Investigation suspended | Detailed investigation requires further information from customers. Microsoft will specify the necessary data or logs needed to proceed with the investigation. |
| Service restored | Corrective action has successfully resolved the underlying problem, and the service is confirmed to be in a healthy state. Issue details provide insights into the root cause. |
| False positive | After thorough investigation, the service is confirmed to be healthy and functioning as designed. No service impact was observed, or the issue originated outside of the service itself. False positive incidents/advisories remain in history view until expiration. |
| Post-incident report published | A Post Incident Report is available, detailing the root cause of a specific issue and outlining steps taken to prevent recurrence. |
Message Post Types: Understanding Update Frequency and Detail
| Type | Definition |
|---|---|
| Quick Update | Brief, frequent updates for widespread incidents, accessible to all customers, providing incremental progress reports. |
| Additional Details | More in-depth posts offering richer technical and resolution details, providing deeper visibility into incident handling. Available to tenants meeting specific requirements, similar to those for Exchange Online monitoring. |
Accessing Historical Service Health Data
Service health allows you to review both current status and historical 365 health services data. The History view provides access to service advisories and incidents that have impacted your tenant over the past 30 days. This historical perspective can be valuable for identifying trends and understanding past service events.
For more information about Microsoft’s commitment to service uptime and reliability, refer to Transparent operations from Microsoft 365.
Configuring Language Translation for Service Health Dashboard
Service health posts are initially written in English for timely dissemination, but automatic translation is available to display messages in your preferred language within Microsoft 365. If your preferred language is set to something other than English, a translation option will appear on the Service health page. These translations are machine-generated. Language settings are personal; each user must configure their own preferred language.
Setting Your Preferred Language in Microsoft 365
- Navigate to the Microsoft 365 admin center https://admin.microsoft.com or your Microsoft 365 home page. Select the settings icon, typically located in the upper-right corner of the page.
- Under Language and time zone, click View all to expand the language options. Choose your desired language from the dropdown menu and click Save. Microsoft 365 will attempt to refresh and display the new language. If the language change isn’t immediately visible, refresh your browser or sign out and sign back into Microsoft 365.
Enabling Machine Translation in the Service Health Dashboard
When your preferred language is set to a language other than English, the option to enable machine translation for Service health posts becomes available.
To activate automatic machine translation, go to Health > Service health dashboard. You will see a toggle button to turn automatic translation on or off. When off, posts are displayed in English. When turned on, messages are shown in your preferred language. This setting is persistent across visits.
You can also toggle between English and your preferred language for specific issue details on the issue details page, accessed by clicking on an issue title.
Related Resources
Microsoft 365 Admin Center Help
Microsoft 365 Service Descriptions
