at 10:14 PM Slack was down globally for 5 hours
On January 4th, 2021, popular team collaboration and communication app Slack suffered a continuous worldwide outage for 5 hours.
As described on the official Slack service status page, Slack customers were unable to connect to the service to send or receive messages from 10:14 AM Eastern Time to 3:10 PM Eastern Time. Throughout the entirety of the outage, Slack staff continued to provide updates on the situation every 30 minutes, with "all hands...on deck" as immediately as it was declared an outage (as opposed to the initially reported incident) at 11:20 AM ET.
This Slack outage came on what is, for many Slack users, the first working day of the 2021 calendar year. This disruption made it so communication and coordination with coworkers on active projects and regular workflow were impossible for several hours. In AlternativeTo's case, several members of the crew used Discord in order to maintain regular operational communication during the downtime. Other businesses that use Slack alternatives, such as Microsoft Teams, were able to proceed with their work as usual.
As of this writing, the outage has been resolved, though Slack's integration with Google Calendar and Microsoft Office Outlook's calendar feature as well as email notifications are still not working as they should.
Further coverage: Slack Status Site
