An email that never arrives, a Teams meeting you can’t join: the Microsoft outage on 12 and 13 November 2026 was a reminder of how much a company’s communications can depend on the same provider. Companies in Luxembourg also experienced difficulties. For a small team or a large organisation, the practical question is the same: how do you keep talking when the usual tools become unavailable?
Recovery announced, not a final assessment
According to statements by Microsoft reported by AFP on 13 November, the incident affected Outlook, Teams and Copilot following heavy demand on its infrastructure. The company announced improvements on Friday afternoon, while continuing to report access difficulties and email delays.
In its update on Friday evening, RTL reported a further improvement announced by Microsoft, with residual disruptions still possible, particularly in Europe. This reflects the situation reported on 13 November, not a guarantee of availability for every account.
The risk lies in dependencies
Speaking to RTL on Friday at around 11 a.m., Loïc Beurlet, Customer Service Director at BCE, highlighted the everyday benefits of an integrated suite, but also the dependency it creates. Several useful tools can become difficult to use at the same time.
His advice: examine the company’s dependencies and plan other means of communication. He specifically mentioned Luxchat, the Luxembourg messaging service. The aim is to be able to carry on with some of the work during an outage.
The point is worth turning into a very practical question: will the means chosen to tell colleagues about the outage still work when the main messaging service is unresponsive? Preparing a backup channel therefore means deciding who will use it, for what information and with what access.
What Luxchat can offer
The official presentation of Luxchat distinguishes between three interoperable services: Luxchat, free for the public and businesses; Luxchat4Pro, paid and designed for advanced professional needs; and Luxchat4Gov, reserved for the professional use of public-sector staff.
The solution allows users to exchange messages, share files and make audio or video calls. It is operated in Luxembourg and can be accessed on a mobile device, computer or browser. These features are useful for keeping in touch with colleagues. They do not mean that your Outlook inbox, calendar or all your work tools are automatically restored.
Another detail matters when deciding what conversations to have there: the official FAQ distinguishes end-to-end encryption for messages and one-to-one calls from encryption in transit for video calls involving three or more people. An app’s name alone is therefore not enough to describe all its protections.
Set up access before you need it
The FAQ says that Luxchat can be used by residents, cross-border workers and businesses. It sets out a specific process for cross-border workers without a Luxembourg mobile number: create a LuxID account, then request access from LU-CIX using the contact details provided.
For a cross-border team, this makes it useful to check access in advance. Installing an app on the day of an outage does not guarantee that all colleagues will be able to use it straight away.
A simple preparation can start with three points: choose a channel accepted by the company; check that the people concerned know how to log in; agree what information to share there and what should remain in business tools. This is a suggested approach to organising things, to be adapted to each employer’s requirements.
An additional channel is no guarantee against every outage. Its value lies in a specific purpose: enabling the team to coordinate while the main service is being restored. And this arrangement should be tested before the next incident.
Archive photo: the Microsoft sign in front of Building 92 in Redmond, in May 2022. Lectrician1 / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 4.0.
