Microsoft 365 Alert – Service Degradation – Exchange Online – Users may be unable to see photo thumbnails of contacts in the Outlook desktop client – RESOLVED

Announcements Sourav Nandi

21/04/2023 09:15:00 AM (GMT)

NHSmail Reference : INC35437544

Microsoft Reference : EX543659

Issue Status : RESOLVED

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

More Information : Photo thumbnails may still show for users who were previously searched.

Final Update : 28/04/2023 11:19:00 AM – The deployment of the 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 impact any user attempting to view photo thumbnails of contacts in the Outlook desktop client.

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: Microsoft are reviewing their change validation procedures to identify how the coding issue was missed and better prevent similar future impact.