You're not fired, Slack is down – here's what we know so far

If you use Slack for work, you’re (probably) not fired. But it might be a good time to take a long lunch break.

The widely used workplace platform is facing serious issues today, with many users unable to log in at all. Affected users trying to access Slack (myself included) are greeted with a message saying, “We’re having trouble loading your workspace.” The message continues: “This is one of those times when we’re not sure what went wrong, but we do have some suggestions that might help.” 

Also: 6 Slack tips I swear by to turn a chaotic workspace into a well-oiled machine

Those suggestions, including restarting Slack, do not fix the problem.

Just before noon ET, reports of problems skyrocketed on DownDetector, a popular site for tracking outages. Reports are subsiding, but many people still say they can’t log in. As of 1 p.m., the official Slack system status page says many features are fine, but shows that messaging, login, connectivity, apps, and workflow are all affected by an unknown issue.

Slack hasn’t explained what the problem is, but its latest update, posted at 1:03 p.m. ET today, says, “We’re still working to restore functionality to affected Slack features such as sending messages, workflows, threads, and other API-related features.  We’ll be back with more updates as soon as they’re available.” 

The company first acknowledged the problem at 10:30 a.m. ET, saying, “We’re investigating reports of trouble connecting or loading Slack, we’ll provide another update once we have news to share.”

If you can use the mobile app, it seems to be working better than the desktop version, including the ability to send messages and see chats. 

The best way to find out when Slack restores service is to keep an eye on its status site. As of this writing, there’s no estimate as to when service will be fully restored.