Slack Etlyons Theverge – Slack, the office chat and collaboration app that’s become a workplace staple in recent years, has been experiencing a widespread outage since 10am ET Friday morning. While Slack is still up and running for some of its users, others have not been able to connect to their accounts or access files shared on it.
A spokesperson from Slack said that increased error rates were caused by an issue with a configuration setting related to email delivery: “We’ve identified the issue as an increase in errors being generated when sending email through our systems. We’re working to resolve this issue and mitigate the increased error rate.”
The spokesperson continued, adding, “We’re sorry for the trouble and any disruption this is causing your teams. We don’t have an estimate of when our services will be fully recovered at this time.”
Update November 30th, 1:55PM ET: Updated with Slack’s response. The article has also been updated to reflect a new statement from Slack that there was an increase in error rates being generated when sending email through its systems.
Update November 30th, 7:00PM ET: Updated with Slack’s statement at the bottom of this story.
Update December 1st, 4:34AM ET: Added additional details about Slack’s outage.
Slack, which lets employees communicate quickly and easily via messaging app on their computers and mobile devices, going down is an issue that affects a huge number of teams in many companies. According to the company’s website, Slack has more than 6 million daily active users and more than 70,000 paid teams. And according to a report from Bloomberg earlier this year, Slack is considered one of the most attractive startups for employee retention given that engineers are reportedly offered $10,000 signing bonuses.
Blocked message notifications are currently being displayed on employee’s screens at The Verge. The app appears to still be working for some people, but it is inaccessible for everyone else. The Verge’s own Slack team, which consists of about nine people, has been affected for about half an hour.
Several others on Twitter have been complaining about the outage as well, although many of them still seem to have access to the app:
Omg @slackHQ is down and I’m so sad. I can’t do my job and I want to go cry in a corner pic.twitter.com/IIxG7R88En — Pavel Turin (@PavelTurin) November 30, 2016
On the bright side, they are all still on the blockchain.
Update November 30th, 10:04AM ET: Updated with Slack’s initial comment at the bottom of this story.
Update November 30th, 11:18AM ET: Added additional details about Slack’s outage.
Update November 30th, 11:42AM ET: Updated with Slack’s statement at the bottom of this story.
Update November 30th, 1:55PM ET: Updated with a statement from Slack after identifying the cause of the outage. In addition, Slack is planning to post an update by 3PM ET about its progress restoring service.
Update November 30th, 3:24PM ET: Added Slack’s plan to restore service by the end of today and confirmation that its services are back online.
Update November 30th, 6:58PM ET: Updated with Slack’s update at the bottom of this story.
Update December 1st, 4:34AM ET: Added additional details about Slack’s outage.
Update December 1st, 5:50AM ET: Updated with a statement from Slack after identifying the cause of the outage. In addition, Slack is planning to post an update by 3PM ET about its progress restoring service.
