Outlook 365 Web Mail Broken?

[rgibson1]

We think we’ve discovered a problem with Outlook 365 (web mail) when trying to reply to students through a Canvas Notification. Something is not allowing the proper formatting for the recipient address in Outlook. Through several back-and-forth conversations with Canvas Support we think we’ve narrowed it down to a Microsoft problem. Not 100% certain, but that is our best information at present. Canvas engineers are aware. There is a work-around for until this is resolved: utilize the Outlook desktop client rather than the web client. It works fine.

Has anyone else seen this?

[mzucal · Accepted solution]

We are seeing the same issue with Office 365 mail. The desktop client (so far) is working.

[ajc196 · Accepted solution]

I'm the O365 admin for our school, and we are seeing this same issue here as well.  Desktop Outlook clients can respond to Canvas notifications just fine, but in Outlook on the Web, they do not even attempt to send.

Furthermore, I can copy/paste the lengthy reply-to address, paste it into the "To:" field, and it will highlight itself in red showing that it will not be able to send.  If you try sending, it will not even do so, the "Send" button just does not respond.  But, if I truncate the address down to 93 characters or less, it no longer is in red, and it can be sent. (Albeit bouncing, but it will at least send.)

When @notifications.canvaslms.com is at the end, it will start having issues at 94 characters. However, if I come up with a garbage address with some domain that doesn't really exist, there doesn't seem to be that same character limit.

This same behavior is seen in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all the same.

It looks like some weird combination of Canvas being the recipient address's domain, in addition to being over 93 characters long.

I'm fairly confident that if I open a Microsoft support case, they will see these behaviors and say that it isn't Microsoft's fault, even though it technically is.  (Microsoft support is very level-1-ish and they will not do any digging until you spend 1-2 days providing irrelevant logs)  If Instructure has any contacts they work with at Microsoft, I believe they need to get a conversation going with them on this issue, since it is clearly not specific to any one tenant based on the multiple reports in this thread and other threads.

EDIT: We received similar word from our Canvas support case as others, that their product team is aware and working with Microsoft on a fix.

[stuart_ryan]

Hi rgibson1,

I have actually had a bit of a discussion in another thread over here Canvas with Outlook, though we didn't narrow down if this was the web version or the desktop version, definitely sounds like it could be related.

Cheers,

Stuart

[rmurchshafer]

I can confirm we are seeing the same issue.  At first we thought it was limited to using Safari and web access to Office 365, but I am also seeing the issue with Chrome as well, although not exactly presented in the same way.  Also confirmed that things still work fine using Outlook mail client on my Mac.  

Thanks for sharing information that it's likely a Microsoft issue. I'm hoping Instructure is talking to them about it.

Rick

[rgibson1]

They aren't. They closed my ticket and informed me to open a case with Microsoft.

[mzucal · Accepted solution]

We are seeing the same issue with Office 365 mail. The desktop client (so far) is working.

[jsmith]

This is a problem at our institution as well.  Webmail cannot reply but desktop client can.

[ajc196 · Accepted solution]

I'm the O365 admin for our school, and we are seeing this same issue here as well.  Desktop Outlook clients can respond to Canvas notifications just fine, but in Outlook on the Web, they do not even attempt to send.

Furthermore, I can copy/paste the lengthy reply-to address, paste it into the "To:" field, and it will highlight itself in red showing that it will not be able to send.  If you try sending, it will not even do so, the "Send" button just does not respond.  But, if I truncate the address down to 93 characters or less, it no longer is in red, and it can be sent. (Albeit bouncing, but it will at least send.)

When @notifications.canvaslms.com is at the end, it will start having issues at 94 characters. However, if I come up with a garbage address with some domain that doesn't really exist, there doesn't seem to be that same character limit.

This same behavior is seen in Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all the same.

It looks like some weird combination of Canvas being the recipient address's domain, in addition to being over 93 characters long.

I'm fairly confident that if I open a Microsoft support case, they will see these behaviors and say that it isn't Microsoft's fault, even though it technically is.  (Microsoft support is very level-1-ish and they will not do any digging until you spend 1-2 days providing irrelevant logs)  If Instructure has any contacts they work with at Microsoft, I believe they need to get a conversation going with them on this issue, since it is clearly not specific to any one tenant based on the multiple reports in this thread and other threads.

EDIT: We received similar word from our Canvas support case as others, that their product team is aware and working with Microsoft on a fix.

[audra_agnelly]

Yes, we're seeing this in OWA as well. My response from Canvas Support:

Thank you for contacting Canvas Support. We have had other reports of users with Outlook who are unable to respond to Canvas notifications when using the Web App. We have reached out to Outlook to figure out why this is happening, as it appears to be an issue on their end. We have found that if you are using the Outlook app, you can disable the AutoComplete feature and that should resolve the issue. Here is an article that will explain how to enable/disable AutoComplete:https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2199226/information-about-the-outlook-autocomplete-list

[Stef_retired]

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. Our Partnerships team has reached out to Microsoft about this issue, and our Product team is aware of it as well.

[kyle_whiteley]

There appears to be a 92 character limit on Office 365 web for the email address.  Our reply address from a Canvas message in Outlook is 99.  The published email standard is 315 so Microsoft may have messed up. (Credit to Cliff Becker for discovering this).

[vsinou]

We have been experiencing an issue with responding to Canvas messages from Outlook. We have discovered that this issue only affects the OWA (Outlook Web App), and doesn’t affect the desktop client. Working with our network admin and analyzing the message details of 2 separate message one before the issue arose, and one that is being affected. We determined that a change made on your end to the “Reply” line is causing the error. In this email I will display both detail sections with a highlighted portion representing the alter reply line.

That is the working message details.

As you can see in the second picture, (the broken message) there was a change to the “Reply-To” line.

Thank you for looking into a solution to the issue.

[elisat]

We are seeing this at Utah State University, as well.

[elearn]

We received a teacher's report at CityU HK too. Microsoft support replied today that the local part of email address cannot exceed 64 octets, and it means 64 characters. Microsoft asked us to reach Canvas support for this issue.

[chastinec]

We've seen this with a few instructors so far as well. My support tech and I were able to see the behaviors, but it allowed us to select the To user and proceed. Seemed like just an extra step compared to Outlook proper. Unfortunately, this did not work for our instructors.

I will have them try the autocomplete workaround suggested by  @audra_agnelly ‌, but will also alert our system admin so we can get on the list of complaints...maybe having more of us complain/report it will motivate those in the know to work with Microsoft to find a solve.

[audra_agnelly]

Just received this from our server engineer who has been working with Microsoft Support:

"I spoke to the Microsoft tech this morning.  They have determined that this issue is being caused by the new version of OWA that was rolled out to our O365 tenant recently.  They are going to refer my Microsoft ticket to their production team to determine how they can fix this issue on the backend.  In the meantime, they recommend using one of these three workarounds:

1)  When attempting to reply, click the red highlighted address.  If there is a cached address from a previous successful reply, use that one to send the message.
2)  With the new OWA open, open another tab in the browser and access the old OWA using the link https://outlook.office.com/owa/?path=/fb.  Reply to the message in this window.
3)  Use the desktop Outlook application.

It will most likely take a while (maybe weeks) for Microsoft to resolve this issue."

I tested the cache issue, but had 2 cached addresses from my testing which were based on different conversation threads, so a teacher could end up responding to an old convo (if there's even a cached address). 

[cms_hickss]

We are experiencing this issue too. Just as an FYI, people using the iOS apps on phones and tablet, will not have this issue. The app processes it just like the desktop client does.

[amckune]

We are experiencing this issue too.

[rachel_goc]

We are also seeing this problem at our institution. Thank you to everyone who's been pursuing answers with Instructure and Microsoft.

[dwillmore]

Instructure confirmed that there is a problem with the Outlook web client.   We found that you can click on the "To" field and select one of the two or more email addresses found there.  Then you can send the reply.

[audra_agnelly]

 @dwillmore ‌, we found this works but only if the reply address has been cached before. The 2 addresses are each linked to a different conversation thread, so the sender doesn't know which they're replying to. I guess that doesn't impact email-to-email responses much but if your working through the Canvas Inbox, there would be confusion. If you've never responded to the recipient before, you won't see those cached addresses.

[dwillmore]

Audra,

Thanks for the update.  That makes sense.

[stuart_ryan]

Disclaimer: I am not saying this is fixed... However...

I had a little birdie from Microsoft tweet me (as I reached out to them there too) one of the Product Managers asking me to re-test. This seems to be working for me in Outlook Web now. How about everyone else?

Philip @Outlook on Twitter: "@StuartCRyan Could you do me a favor and give that one more try? … " 

[rgibson1]

Please introduce me to your birdies....

[rgibson1]

One user just reported that it's still broken here....

[rgibson1]

Verified again in more testing. Still broken....

[ajc196]

Still broken here. Hopefully it's just still being applied across tenants, and the fix is a good fix.

[dwillmore]

Working here now.

[kyle_whiteley]

It's working here, too.  Fingers crossed that the fix is permanent.

[rgibson1]

I'll keep testing throughout the day, but still not working as of 9:33 CST.

[rmurchshafer]

It is working for me.  I tested it using O365 web client in Chrome and Safari and had success.  Asking others at my school to test as well.

Rick

[ajc196]

The fix seems to have hit our tenant since earlier this morning, and it is now working.

[jsmith]

Ours seems to be working now as well.  Asking other users to verify.

[rgibson1]

Yes, working here as well. Whew!

Bonus: I moved up 10 spots on the leaderboard. I guess I need more issues. 😃

[Naomi · Accepted solution]

Hello!

We did reach out to Microsoft based on your reports and heard back from them that they were able to resolve the issues. We’re happy to hear it seems like it is working again for you. As always, let us know if and when something doesn’t seem to be working correctly. Thanks for being a part of the Community!

Naomi

[audra_agnelly]

Sad Panda  I just tested and was not able to reply to a message from O365.

[stuart_ryan]

Hi  @audra_agnelly , 

I wanted to check in and see if this was still causing you problems?

Cheers,
Stuart

[audra_agnelly]

Hi  @stuart_ryan ‌, I just tested again and I was able to reply via OWA. Happy Panda!

[stuart_ryan]

Hi Audra,

That is FANTASMIC news! *happy panda dances* great to hear!

Stuart