Slack had a bumpy return from the holiday season today, thanks to a widespread outage that hit just after 10 a.m. ET.
“Customers may have trouble loading channels or connecting to Slack at this time,” the service posted at 10:14 a.m. ET. “Our team is investigating and we’ll follow up with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for any disruption caused.”
Just shy of 2:30 p.m. ET, Slack said it was “seeing improvements with error rates on our side, and we believe affected customers should be able to access Slack,” though problems persist with some calendar apps and email notifications.
Slack advises those who are able to access the service to avoid reloading at the moment. Anyone who cannot (if you’re seeing a blank screen or an error message) should reload via Ctrl/CMD+ R.
Depending on who you ask, the outage is either a welcome way to ease back into the work week after the holiday break, or an annoying start to 2021. People were forced to retreat to the service Slack was born to kill—email—as well as G-Chat, Microsoft Teams, and other chat services. For those hoping to nab another vacation day, however, Zoom and Google Meet are still online, full of bleary eyed co-workers ready for another year of telling one another they’re on mute, or that they cut out there for a second. Happy New Year!
