How to Troubleshoot Common M365 Suite Issues

Microsoft 365 is a powerful engine for productivity and collaboration for many businesses and enterprises. It comes with many products such as Teams, Azure cloud services, SharePoint, Exchange Online, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. As M365 Suite Services are used to deploy these, they can also be used to troubleshoot common issues that may arise with time. Experts at Untitled10 make troubleshooting less challenging when technical problems occur. A systematic and informed approach can help address disruptions with the M365 environment as they arise. This guide can help tackle common M365 issues and offer tangible steps businesses and IT teams can implement to address Microsoft 365 issues. 

A Layered Approach to M365 Troubleshooting

A solutions architect can help address M365 deployment and technical issues as they arise. Specialists use a layered approach to investigate individual events and product branches to resolve sign-in, installation, registration, workflow, and other issues. The following layers may be investigated for effective troubleshooting:

• Identity Layer (Entra ID) – This helps assess the health of user identity, authentication, licenses, and conditional policies that may access sign-in or product access. 
• Network Layer – Assessing connectivity to Microsoft’s endpoints is vital, as it may be restricted due to proxies, firewalls, bandwidth limitations, and DNS issues. 
• Service Health Layer – Reviews if specific M365 products or services are experiencing any outage or degradation. At times, products expire or lose their access key, which may reduce access to certain features. 
• Configuration Layer – Since multiple products exist in the M365 suite, a change in policy, setting, or service configurations can impact access to the user or organization. 
• Client/Endpoint Layer – Due to the diversity in device usage from mobile devices to laptops and IoT, there can be application installation, individual device settings, or local configuration that might cause a problem.

Common Issues and Practical Troubleshooting Steps

Common issues in Microsoft 365 can occur across all products. These might include access and authentication problems, service-specific issues, connectivity issues, and policy conflicts. Here are the steps to address these: 

• Authentication Issues

This happens when users cannot access M365 products due to an authentication loop, MFA problems, licensing issues, or conditional policies. The following steps can help address this:

• Verify user status and login details, and sign-in logs for error codes.
• Check if the correct password is being used or initiate a password reset.
• Review MFA methods and temporarily disable/re-enable MFA.
• Use Conditional Access tools to overcome location, device state, and sign-in risk. 
• Verify if the correct licenses are installed to allow user access. 

• Connectivity Issues

Connectivity issues may range from dropped calls in Teams, weak connection, difficulty sending and receiving emails, or inability to update or download documents from SharePoint or OneDrive. This can occur due to proxy issues, firewalls, poor internet connection, DNS problems, and local network congestion. The following steps can help address connectivity issues:

• Ensure your Microsoft products and associated URLs can access the internet over firewalls. 
• Use the Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool to assess enterprise network perimeter health, workload, and TCP latency.
• Review the distance the network travels over the LAN and WAN to improve bandwidth and connectivity. 
• Ensure local and external DNS are correctly resolving M365 service endpoints.
• Use the Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant (SaRA) to address delays due to network traffic.

• Service Functionality Issues

There might be mail delivery issues on Exchange and Outlook products, inability to join meetings at Teams, downgrade of features on productivity apps, and other specific problems that might need resolution. M365 Suite Services from Untitled10 can help analyze changes in mailbox rules, service-specific problems, permission issues, and a lack of internet connectivity might be prominent causes. Here are some tips to resolve these:

• Use the Microsoft 365 Admin Center for specific service issues in real-time. 
• Review access profiles and service configuration for individual products such as Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and Outlook. 
• Ensure M365 services and products are updated, with a clean cache to reduce disruption. 
• Go to the Task Manager and restart services.msc if there is no resolution to app concerns. 

Microsoft Tools for Troubleshooting Issues

The Microsoft 365 solution has multiple tools to troubleshoot ongoing issues that individuals or teams face when using M365 products. The following can be used:

• Microsoft 365 Admin Center for individual product service health, user management, licensing, and links to specific service admin centers.
• Microsoft Support and Recovery Assistant (SaRA) can automate, diagnose, and fix issues with Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and other M365 applications. 

Layered Troubleshooting with Untitled10 M365 Suite Services

As a small business or enterprise, you face hundreds of issues that could impact productivity, efficiency, and team collaboration. Untitled10, as part of the M365 suite services, uses layered troubleshooting to resolve issues methodically and systematically. This helps move beyond individual service symptoms and address product issues at a deeper identity, network, and configuration layers. Untitled10 also provides regular monitoring, structured deployment, and user training to ensure your business benefits from a stable M365 environment. Contact us today to adopt digital transformations using Microsoft 365 products. 

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FAQs

What’s the first thing I should check if users report widespread issues with an M365 service?

The first thing to do when your teams are facing widespread issues with M365 services is to use the Service Health Dashboard in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center to look for individual product issues or a major service description. Contact Untitled10 M365 Suite Services for the fastest way to determine if you face disruptions with an ongoing service. This can also be used to update products and check for license issues.

What should be done if users report issues after a password reset? What could be the cause?

Some common causes that might impact Microsoft services after a password reset include cached credentials on the user’s device, delays in password sync, failed multi-factor authentication (MFA) prompts, or changes in conditional policies. Clearing cached credentials, verifying MFA setup, and reviewing conditional authentication are reasonable first steps.

We’re experiencing poor call quality specifically in Microsoft Teams. Where should I look first?

Some troubleshooting tips to address poor Teams call quality include checking bandwidth, latency, and packet loss on the network connection to Microsoft’s Teams endpoints. Ensure there are no active firewalls or DNS issues that might affect service quality. Verify the user’s headset/audio device configuration to resolve poor quality issues and check the Teams client’s built-in call analytics.