If you tried to send an email Thursday and Outlook just sat there, it wasn’t you. Microsoft had a widespread outage with Exchange Online and other Microsoft 365 services on November 12, and for a lot of businesses it dragged on for close to ten hours.
Outages like this happen. Even Microsoft has bad days. The good news is there’s a pretty simple way to keep your email moving while they sort it out, and it’s something I set up for clients all the time through Barracuda.
Email Continuity: A Backup Inbox for Bad Days
When Microsoft goes down, Barracuda’s Email Continuity kicks in and gives your team a temporary mailbox in the cloud. From there, people can still send, receive, read, and respond to email like normal. Once Microsoft is back up, everyone goes back to Outlook.
For most folks, the biggest thing is just not having to tell a customer “sorry, our email is down.”
Spooling: Nothing Gets Lost
Spooling is the other half of this. While Microsoft is down, Barracuda holds onto any email coming in for you instead of bouncing it back. Barracuda’s servers can hold mail for up to 96 hours, then delivers it once things are working again.
Your customers and vendors never know anything happened. Their emails just show up a little later.
A Few Things Worth Doing This Week
- Find out if you have it. A lot of businesses already pay for Barracuda and don’t realize continuity is part of it. Sometimes it’s just not turned on.
- Turn on auto enable. In Barracuda, you can set continuity to Auto Enable so nobody has to remember to flip a switch during an outage.
- Tell your team where to go. Send everyone the link to the backup mailbox and have them save it.
- Test it once. Doesn’t need to be a big deal. Just log in and make sure it works before you actually need it.
- Check out our Communication Services Page: https://highlinetechnologies.com/services/business-communications-services
Challenges and Solutions
“Microsoft is pretty reliable, right?” It is, most of the time. Barracuda says 79% of organizations reported a Microsoft 365 email outage in the past 12 months, so it’s worth having a plan.
“My team won’t remember any of this.” That’s normal. This is where a strong IT Partner comes in! We can walk your people through it in a few minutes.
“I don’t have time to set this up.” You shouldn’t have to. That’s what you pay your IT Partner for!
The Highline Summary
Thursday was frustrating for a lot of people, but it’s a good reminder to check what happens when email goes down. If you’re not sure whether you’re covered, give us a call. I’m happy to take a look and tell you where you stand, no strings attached.
