\n<\/p>\n
“From an IT professional’s perspective, there is also a certain helplessness when you establish that the underlying problem is happening at the service provider’s end,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When 24-year-old analyst Steven Chua logged into his work computer on Friday morning, he noticed something unusual. He had not received any emails since the previous night.<\/p>\n
“I noticed that I could still access Outlook but there were no new messages since midnight, even though I usually get emails past midnight from people from other countries,” he said.<\/p>\n
While he could still communicate face-to-face with colleagues in Singapore, the disruption hampered his work with overseas teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We also get important alerts and announcements through email, so we would have missed out on any that happened in the morning,” he added.<\/p>\n
Others adjusted their schedules to work around the disruption.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An engineer who wanted to be known only as Mr Teo spent the day focusing on individual tasks rather than replying to emails.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old also used Microsoft Teams’ chat function, which remained accessible to him, to share files and links with colleagues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some employees had to reschedule meetings after the outage affected Microsoft Teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A human resources executive told CNA that job interviews originally scheduled on Teams had to be moved to Zoom, while internal meetings were postponed to the following week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But even rescheduling proved difficult, as she was unable to email invitations to participants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those away from work were not spared either. One employee on medical leave said she could not set an automatic out-of-office reply to inform colleagues of her absence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some students were also affected, with some unable to access study materials ahead of their examinations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With an exam just four days away, National University of Singapore (NUS) law undergraduate Saw Yone Yone was unable to access lecture slides emailed to him by his professor after each lesson.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was also unable to use Microsoft Authenticator, leaving him locked out of several university websites and portals, including LexisNexis, which he uses to access legal cases on his prescribed reading lists, and his NUS library account.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n