Updated Microsoft Teams was updated last week to version 1.5.00.2164 and its most notable feature, for at least some users, is not being able to send or receive calls.
This is perhaps less than ideal given that Teams is intended as a collaboration and meetings tool.
The Teams desktop app, according to several users, has been reporting a vague “Something went wrong” error after update installation. And thereafter it cannot access device speakers or microphone.
“Every time our devices upgrade daily to 1.5.00.2164 it kills the audio connections,” observed Adrian Edgar, managing director of AspiraCloud, via Twitter last week. “Only route seems to be a downgrade.”
Microsoft Teams support inquired via Twitter about whether Edgar has an existing support ticket but offered no indication whether the company is aware of others who have reported the same problem.
Posts to Microsoft’s Tech Community forum describe the same sort of app failures. “We’ve also had a similar issue crop up with two of our users running 1.5.00.2164,” said one individual. “When placing a voice call we get the ‘something went wrong’ error. We also can’t place or receive video calls and the button to place one is grayed out/disabled.”
Related claims have popped up in Microsoft’s Questions forum. And in Reddit’s Sysadmin forum, the advice is to use Teams via web browser because rolling back to a functioning version will be undone by a subsequent Auto Update.
Microsoft, alas, didn’t immediately respond to a request to confirm that it’s aware something is amiss.
The fact that there isn’t more of an outcry suggests the bug only affects a small portion of Teams users, who number 270 million monthly, according to Microsoft comms chief Frank Shaw.
Teams is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Linux; it’s also offered as part of the cloud service Microsoft 365. Like rival apps Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet, Teams has grown significantly during the COVID pandemic as traditional, face-to-face meetings have been nixed over public health concerns. In January, on Microsoft’s earnings call for investors, CEO Satya Nadella touted how organizations are using Teams to handle their business workflow.
“Monthly usage of third-party applications and custom-built solutions has grown ten times in the last two years, with new and updated apps this quarter from Atlassian, Monday.com, SAP, and Workday,” said Nadella.
“United Airlines is using bots within Teams to create tighter connections between operations and flight crews. And Marks & Spencer uses Power Apps and Teams to streamline internal help desk requests.”
For help desk requests about Teams not working, maybe try something other than Teams. ®
Updated to add
In a statement sent after this story was published, Microsoft spokesperson said: “Microsoft Teams is running normally. We resolved an issue that may have prevented a very limited number of users from making or receiving calls in the desktop app.”
