Office has updated! CC: DL-Everyone - Office 365 now blocks Reply All storms by default

[rcmaehl]

Source:

ZDNet (media, quote source)

Engadget (quote source)
 

Summary:
Office 365 now limits emails with over 5000 recipients to 10 per hour.

 

Media (Click to Enlarge):

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

Quote

Microsoft might just save you the next time a coworker starts a “reply all” email storm. It’s now rolling out a...feature that protects Office 365 users worldwide. It’ll initially help large companies by blocking replies if there are 10 “reply all” messages sent to over 5,000 people within an hour. If that happens, the system will block subsequent replies for four hours and tell users to calm down. The company hopes to tweak the feature so that it can accommodate smaller organizations, let administrators customize the defense mechanism. You’ll have to wait a while for this if you’re part of a mid-sized business, then. Still, this feature is coming at a particularly appropriate time. When email is now a more important workplace tool than ever. The last thing you want is an inbox choked with “please remove me from this thread”.

Quote

Such events happen almost all the time, and, at one point or another, a company is going to have email servers go down because of employees participating and amplifying Reply-All storms. Microsoft...has suffered two such incidents already. January 2019, and...March 2020. The Microsoft Reply-All email storms included more than 52,000 employees, who ended up clogging the company's internal communications for hours. The feature started rolling out this week to all Office 365 users worldwide. Other planned features also include Reply-All storm reports and real-time notifications. "Humans still behave like humans no matter which company they work for," the Exchange team said this week. "We're already seeing the first version of the feature successfully reduce the impact of reply all storms within Microsoft."

 

My Thoughts:

Based Microsoft. Granted this probably came about from themselves having yet another reply-all fest (god knows we've had 2 ourselves in the last 4 years). It'll be good to see that this will be finally blocked by default. If you've read this far, tag a user

[imreloadin]

Wow, it took Microsoft getting annoyed with their own damn software to finally give it a useful update...

[TVwazhere]

2 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

If you've read this far, tag a user

@A User

[minibois]

Whenever I read something about 'reply all', it reminds me of this story:

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/420oan/companywide_email_30000_employees_autoresponders/

 

But it seems like this fix would not have been sufficient for the problem in the story :^)

[Tristerin]

So this is me.

 

They opened up a position 2 levels above mine - I replied to all, to the HR email stating the position was open, with:

 

Hey Im interested do I need to submit my resume or?  (I was considered the shoe in for the position)

 

It went to everyone in our global company.

 

I heard about it for a few months for sure lol

 

 

[rcmaehl]

5 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

@A User

LAST VISITED:

September 25, 2016

OOF

[TVwazhere]

2 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

i want to do a "tag everyone" joke, but "last visited march 2019" ,_,

@Everyone

 

^{do not test me i will tag literally anyone without remorse}

[rcmaehl]

31 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

^{do not test me i will tag literally anyone without remorse}

_{^{(X) Doubt}}

[porina]

Company where I used to work largely prevented this problem by whitelisting the bigger distribution lists, so only higher level managers or their assistants can send to them. Alternatively I've also seen them send to distribution lists using BCC to hide them, although that can then start a game of "did you get that e-mail..."

 

The problem was for lower level (smaller) distribution lists where anyone can send, and I think that's where reply-all cautioning might come in useful. 

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, TVwazhere said:

do not test me i will tag literally anyone without remorse

@AnyOne

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Great - now make that 5000 configurable, I'll try to convince our IT staff to set that to 10 or so  

[Pickles von Brine]

Sound't this have been a feature a long time ago?


@TVwazhere
You will tag anyone without remorse huh? It takes two to tango. 

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Great - now make that 5000 configurable, I'll try to convince our IT staff to set that to 10 or so  

That's the plan, thankfully!  Microsoft just wants to see how well it works at the large scale before progressing to smaller outfits and customization.

[Arika]

I want this

[BuckGup]

Yes please. The amount of interns who reply all and destroy your inbox is sickly 

[AnonymousGuy]

I love these things though.  They happen every few years where you end up with a dumpster fire of people replying "STOP REPLYING" and just making the problem worse.   The progressive amounts of rage that build are hilarious.   I think my employer got rid of email groups that are larger than a few hundred people though and use a different "system" to send out newsletters and shit.

[IntMD]

I remember back when I worked for another company. They had ~600-800 local employees at the time, and an all local staff email went out. Some 17/18 year old hit reply all just as this email had come in and written something to who he thought was just his friend, which included some interesting words and without apparently looking at the email he was replying all on. Hilarity ensued, but not for him. The MD replied to him, and still kept everyone else copied in. The joys of international banking.

[leadeater]

Spoiler

15 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Source:

ZDNet (media, quote source)

Engadget (quote source)
 

Summary:
Office 365 now limits emails with over 5000 recipients to 10 per hour.

 

Media (Click to Enlarge):

 

Quotes/Excerpts:

 

My Thoughts:

Based Microsoft. Granted this probably came about from themselves having yet another reply-all fest (god knows we've had 2 ourselves in the last 4 years). It'll be good to see that this will be finally blocked by default. If you've read this far, tag a user

 

*Reply All*

[Guest willies leg]

You'd think they'd use pointers to the message and then just duplicate the message when it changes. Maybe I can patent that and sell it to Microsoft. Hmmm....

[Belgarathian]

Someone at Microsoft fucked up for this to become a feature...

 

Codename for the internal project was probably 'Jarrad' 

[Techstorm970]

This will be very useful.  Can't wait to be freed from screaming matches because someone hit "Reply All."