On March 21, users all over the world reported that there was a problem while signing in to Skype, OneDrive, and Outlook along with various other Microsoft accounts. A similar problem had plagued users a few days ago, when they were unable to sign-in to their cloud services.
Even the Xbox Live site recorded signing-in issues, along with limited access. The users faced issues while purchasing and downloading items using Xbox Live.
Managed Service Accounts or MSA is Microsoft's single sign-on program, through which users can be authenticated and can log into various Microsoft services.
However, currently, MSA does not use Azure Active Directory for any authentication. Reports say Microsoft is planning to merge the two authentication services. However, the issue plaguing users presently may not be because of this.
This is not the first time that such an issue has surfaced. Two weeks ago, the Skype Heartbeat site also posted a message saying that users may experience problems signing in.
Microsoft Resolves Issues, Services Resume
After the issue was reported, Microsoft started working on finding a solution so that users could resume signing in to the services.
Initially, the Office 365 status page for signing into Outlook.com and OneDrive reflected issues. Around 3:25 p.m. ET, Microsoft stated that it was deploying a fix to restore services. At about 3:30 p.m. ET, some users reported that they could sign in to their accounts.
Reports revealed that the Azure status dashboard showed it was impacted by the MSA issue, and the engineers were actively working to resolve the matter.
The last update was around 4:30 p.m. ET reporting that Azure was no longer experiencing any log-in or sign-in problems
At the time of writing, only the Outlook issues have been fixed and OneDrive users continue to encounter the problems. The Microsoft website reports that it is working on resolving the OneDrive issues. The next update can be expected by 12:30 p.m. ET on March 22.
"Users may be intermittently unable to sign in to OneDrive," notes the status report.
It remains to be seen how long it takes for Microsoft to resume normal functionality of OneDrive. By the look of things, users may have to face this inconvenience for a little longer.
Even though the problems have occurred in such a short span, Microsoft has not shared any concrete reason behind these issues. The company remains tight-lipped about the issues, which seem to be plaguing Microsoft sevrices frequently.
Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr
