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Microsoft 365 Services to Be Unavailable Briefly During Maintenance on July 25

No email will be lost during the update

As part of ongoing service improvements, beginning at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, July 24, through 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, Duke University and Duke Health email services will be updated and access to Microsoft's Office 365 services, including email, MS Teams, Bookings, and the Azure portal, may be temporarily impacted and unavailable anytime within the 24-hour window. However, no individual user should be impacted for more than 4 hours.

This important update will touch all Duke email accounts through Microsoft Office 365, regardless of whether they are accessed through Outlook, webmail or mobile phone. No email will be lost during the update, and messages will be visible once a user logs back in after the update is complete. 

If you are participating in a Zoom meeting scheduled for the weekend of July 25-26, please make note of the meeting invitation information (URL, meeting ID, password, and call-numbers) prior to July 25 and keep it easily accessible. It is unlikely but possible that you may not be able to access Microsoft Office 365 to get that information during the weekend.

What programs will this impact?
Programs that will be part of the update include Office 365 (email), MS Teams, Azure, and Bookings.

Will all email accounts be impacted?
Yes. Microsoft will update each individual user’s accounts separately over the 24-hour update period. Therefore, within the 24 hours, a user’s email account may be unavailable, but access should return after 4 hours. However, it is possible that some users may experience longer outages, while others may see no impact at all. Users should experience no difference when logging into their Duke email accounts on Monday, July 27.

How will this impact operations?
We have worked with many of the major departments that maintain 24/7 operations to ensure continuity of communications through other means during the email update. However, all managers should discuss and prepare for any needs that might require alternate communication methods within their respective departments for the update period.

What are some alternatives to Duke email for communications?
Personal email accounts may be used during this time to send and receive critical communications, but Protected Health Information (PHI) and other sensitive data cannot be communicated via personal email accounts. Duke Box, a cloud-based storage and collaboration service, can be used to securely upload and share documents.

Will I lose my email if I’m using it during the update?
No. If you are logged-in with your email open before the start of the 24-hour update period, you should not experience issues. No email will be lost during the update, and messages will be visible once a user logs back in after the update is complete.

When will the update be completed?
Microsoft has confirmed that the update will be completed before Sunday, July 26. If individual users experience issues logging into email on Sunday, July 26, they should contact their departmental IT person or technology helpdesk to have their information added to a tracking ticket that will be used to document issues found during the update and ensure that all issues are resolved when the maintenance ends. 

Why are we performing this change?
In order to support Microsoft Intune's AutoPilot and other MS tool sets, we are changing the federation mechanism of Duke’s Microsoft tenant from SAMLP to the WS-* suite of authentication and authorization protocols.

Will Maestro Care be affected?
No, this will not affect Maestro Care.