Microsoft says backend change broke Teams Free chat and calls

Source: Bleeping Computer

Issue Overview

Microsoft is working to resolve a known issue that prevents some Microsoft Teams Free users from chatting and calling others.

Teams Free (also known as Teams for personal use) is a subscription‑free version designed for individuals, families, and small community groups. It provides video conferencing, instant messaging, and collaborative file‑sharing tools on mobile and desktop platforms for users with a Microsoft account.

The company attributes the problem to a recently deployed backend change that skips the onboarding and privacy consent screens for some users, rendering their profiles inaccessible to others.

Impact

• The first reports surfaced on April 8, three weeks ago.
• Microsoft has not disclosed which regions are affected or how many users are impacted.
• Affected users appear as “Unknown users” to others, cannot be searched, and are unable to receive chat requests.

Microsoft has flagged this incident as a service degradation, a label used for issues with noticeable user impact that do not take the service offline.

Microsoft’s Statement

“Some new users who signed up during the impact window were incorrectly treated as already onboarded, causing onboarding and privacy consent screens to be skipped, their profiles to appear as ‘Unknown users’ to others, and preventing them from being searchable or reliably reachable in chat.”
— Microsoft Service Health status update

“We’ve identified a recently deployed backend change is causing new Teams Free users to bypass required onboarding steps, leaving user profiles in an incomplete state. As a result, affected users cannot be discovered, connect with others, or successfully complete chat request flows.”

Microsoft is still looking for a solution and has scheduled another update later today with additional details.

Related Recent Issues

• Windows users unable to join Teams meetings due to a bug introduced by a recent Microsoft Edge update. Details: BleepingComputer article.
• Teams desktop client launch failures caused by a service update that left some customers stuck on a loading screen with the error “We’re having trouble loading your message. Try refreshing.” The issue was later reverted. Details: BleepingComputer article.