Microsoft Scales Back Some Office 365 Features In Response To Work-At-Home Surge

Microsoft, apparently overwhelmed by surging work-at-home traffic, is scaling back some Office 365 features. Microsoft has suffered some slowdowns in the EU and U.S.

In a post republished by Bleeping Computer, the company says, 

“To best support our Microsoft 365 customers worldwide and accommodate new growth and demand during these unprecedented times, we’re making temporary adjustments to select non-essential capabilities. We do not expect these changes to have significant impact on the end users experience but wanted to make you aware. 

"Examples of changes we may make include:

  • How often we check for presence
  • The interval in which we show when the other party is typing 
  • Video resolution."

The company adds: “We will provide further updates to this Message center post should the situation change.

Microsoft Teams went down in Europe on Monday morning of this week, apparently overwhelmed by the number of people working at home because of the COVID-19 virus.   

The company says it was “investigating message-related functionality problems within Microsoft Teams,” and service reportedly was restored after two hours. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft Teams usage has grown by almost 40%, going from 32 million daily active users on March 11 to 44 million on Wednesday, The Verge reports. It is adding new feature such as real-time noise suppression, it says.

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