City of Pickering staff email is offline as a global Microsoft outage disrupts Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook.
The City confirmed in a notice posted to its website that Microsoft is experiencing technical issues affecting Microsoft 365, and that City of Pickering email accounts are impacted as a result.
"Microsoft is currently experiencing technical issues affecting Microsoft 365 services, including Outlook. As a result, City email services are currently impacted," the City said in its notice.
The City is asking residents and businesses to reach out through other communication channels in the meantime. The City's department contacts page lists phone numbers and other ways to connect with individual departments while email remains unavailable.
It's unclear how long the disruption will last. The City said it will provide further updates as soon as more information becomes available from Microsoft.
"Thank you for your patience as we navigate this outage," the City said.
Global outages affecting Microsoft's cloud-based services have a wide reach, since the company's email and productivity tools are used by governments, businesses and school boards across Ontario and beyond. A disruption to Microsoft 365 typically takes email, calendars and file-sharing tools offline at the same time.
Anyone who has sent an email to a City of Pickering address in recent hours may want to follow up by phone or through the City's website once service is restored, since messages may not be delivered or answered until the outage is resolved.
Residents can also subscribe to City of Pickering updates, news and public notices through the City's website to stay informed of further developments.
