User impact: Users may be unable to see photo thumbnails of contacts in the Outlook desktop client.

More info: Photo thumbnails may have still shown for users who were previously searched.

Final status: The deployment of our fix has fully completed, resolving impact. If users continue to see impact, manually downloading the OAB to receive the fixed version will correct the issue, otherwise, users can await the next scheduled OAB automated download to receive the fixed OAB.

Scope of impact: This issue may have impacted any user attempting to view photo thumbnails of contacts in the Outlook desktop client.

Start time: Monday, February 20, 2023, at 10:39 PM UTC

End time: Thursday, April 27, 2023, at 6:30 PM UTC

Root cause: A code issue within a recent change intended to optimize our back-end infrastructure’s handling of requests to fetch photo thumbnails for Outlook address book contacts was resulting in impact.

Next steps:
– We’re reviewing our change validation procedures to identify how the coding issue was missed and better prevent similar future impact.

This is the final update for the event.