What to do in the first hour of a Microsoft 365 outage

Short answer: confirm the incident, open an out-of-band channel for staff, protect inbound email from bouncing, and start a fixed cadence of updates for customers and executives.

1. Confirm it is Microsoft, not you

Check the Microsoft 365 Service Health dashboard in the admin center and note the incident ID. If admins cannot sign in, use a pre-arranged break-glass account.

2. Declare an incident internally

Name an incident lead and a communications lead. One plan, one channel, one source of truth.

3. Move staff to a second channel

Use a chat or SMS tool that does not depend on Teams or Outlook. Share a short message: what is affected, what to do, when the next update will come.

4. Protect inbound mail

Queued mail is usually delivered late rather than lost, but long outages risk bounces. Consider routing inbound mail to a temporary platform or spooling service.

5. Brief customers and executives

Short, factual, on the hour. Avoid speculation about cause or timing.