Slack is now back online after an hour-long outage that left users across the world unable to message each other.
The go-to app for workplace messaging appeared to crash this morning, with more than 5,000 issues logged in Britain alone.
According to Down Detector, the problems started at around 10am BST and affected users globally.
Just before 11am BST, Slack revealed there were issues with its messaging, connections, workflow and search functions.
While the reason for the outage remains unclear, of those who reported issues, 71 per cent said they were unable to send messages, 19 per cent were unable to receive them and 10 per cent had issues with the app.
It’s the go-to messaging app for many people around the world, but it appears that Slack crashed this morning
According to Down Detector, the problems started at around 10:00 BST and affected users globally
Users in Manchester, London, Cardiff and Cambridge are among those in the UK, while 500 others in the US also reported problems.
Slack is an instant messaging platform that is popular with businesses around the world.
‘Slack makes it easy to contact your colleagues – you can message anyone inside or outside your organisation and collaborate just as you would in person,’ it explains on its website.
‘People can work in dedicated spaces called channels, which bring the right people and information together.’
Many users flocked to Twitter to voice their complaints about the outage, while others jokingly asked whether they could skip work.
‘Slack is down. Can I get the day off?’ one person wrote, as another added: ‘I love that the only thing worthy of bringing me back to Twitter was to check if Slack was down (it is, btw).’
Someone else chimed in: ‘Oh great, slack has crashed/not letting me send messages. Amazing.’
Earlier today, it appeared that when users tried to send a message on Slack, an error would pop up reading ‘Slack couldn’t send this message’.
Attempts to ‘try again’ also failed and senders were then likely to receive the same error message.
Many users have taken to Twitter to voice their complaints about the Slack problems
Users in Manchester, London, Cardiff and Cambridge are among those who have had issues
It currently appears that when users try to send a message on Slack, an error pops up reading ‘Slack couldn’t send this message’
However, many users claimed they could still see when another person was typing something even if they were unable to receive it.
‘#Slack is down. Only “typing…” No messages sent or received,’ one person wrote.
Meanwhile, another added: ‘Well, slack is down, my status changed from active to away like 10 times, I thought it was me driving me crazy but seems to be I’m still sane.’
Slack’s monitoring system picked up on the messaging errors faced today, sharing that ‘something’s not quite right’.
At 10.35am, it said: ‘Users may be experiencing trouble with sending messages in Slack. We’re investigating and will let you know as soon as we know more. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.’
While issues were initially limited to messaging, Slack later discovered the other problems with its connections, workflow and search functions.
At 10.57am, Slack then said: ‘Slack experiencing an outage across the app. Users may be experiencing trouble with sending messages, using workflows and various other actions in Slack. We’re investigating and will let you know as soon as we know more. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.’
Now, Slack claims its site is ‘up and running’ with all issues fixed.
