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Despite reporting that the issue was resolved earlier, some Slack users are again experiencing problems accessing the platform.
Users this side of the Atlantic may have missed a Slack outage that hit around 1am UTC today (22 February). The company acknowledged that users were experiencing issues connecting to the platform and sending messages, and added that it was working on a resolution.
Before 3am hit, the workplace messaging service was satisfied this issue was “fully resolved” with all users’ access and capabilities restored.
Slack followed up with a status update detailing what it found to be about an hour-long outage that was sending error codes to users.
“A code change inadvertently caused a conflict in the desktop app and web client, preventing a small number of customers from sending messages,” the company explained. “We reverted the change, resolving the issue for all affected customers.”
However, Slack’s problems have continued as an outage is once again being reported, just over 12 hours since the last one.
At the time of writing, Slack did not have more information on the cause of this second outage. Services currently affected include login, connections, messaging and notifications.
“We’re investigating the issue where Slack is not loading for some users. We’re looking into the cause and will provide more information as soon as it’s available,” the company has had to repeat once again.
While resolving the earlier issue, Slack advised customers to reconnect with a hard refresh: “Please refresh Slack with Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + R to fetch the fix,” it said.
Currently, the Slack app is returning the error message, “Something’s gone awry and we’re having trouble loading your workspace,” when users try to access their chats.
“Sorry we can’t be more specific – this is one of those cases where we don’t know what’s gone wrong either,” the error message adds, advising that users try restarting Slack to help.
Slack is a popular tool for workers – whether remote, hybrid or in-office – to stay in touch and collaborate through group and direct messaging. The company has more than 10m daily active users.
In December 2020, Salesforce announced it would acquire Slack for $27bn. Throughout last year, the company continued to optimise on the distance being created between teams with new features targeting hybrid workers and productivity tools for digital-first workplaces.
Update, 8.10am, 23 February 2022: After about five hours, Slack reported the issue was fully resolved at 7.24pm, Tuesday 22 February. A hard refresh as detailed above is recommended for customers still having trouble accessing the platform. Slack also recommended clearing the app’s cache should issues persist.
The problem was attributed to a configuration change that inadvertently led to a sudden increase in activity on the platform’s database infrastructure which needed to be effectively managed through tighter rate limits. These rate limits were then lifted too quickly for the system to cope, falling back into the same issue. Slack eventually resolved this and has advised users seeking a full report on the issue to email feedback@slack.com.
At the time of this update, most Slack services are live and operational, however some users are reporting issues with reminders and messaging.
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