Saskatoon Transit riders, Healthline 811 affected by global Microsoft outage

Saskatoon residents who ride the bus are being impacted by the nation-wide technology outage affecting Microsoft apps and services on Friday.

“Saskatoon Transit and Access Transit are actively working with supporting teams to resolve disruptions caused by a widespread Microsoft system outage that has affected internal software,” the city said in a news release on Friday morning.

The city said incoming phone lines for Saskatoon Transit and Access Transit were out of commission, and bus riders were unable to get real-time updates on the location of their bus on their trip-planning apps.

Riders who purchase their tickets through the transit app may have issues as well, the city said.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows – and that the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and escalating disruptions continued after the technology company said it was gradually fixing the problem.

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The issues took down Saskatchewan’s HealthLine 811 early Friday morning, but service was restored by 8 a.m., according to a Saskatchewan Health Authority post on X.

Saskatoon Transit disruptions were active most of the day, and the city said its customer service centre experienced a surge in phone calls. They directed customers to reach out via email, instead.

“Despite these disruptions, the downtown customer service centre remains open for physical ticket purchases,” the city said.

“Your patience is appreciated as this is resolved.”

Around 5 p.m., the city said its transit phone lines and mobile ticketing service were restored, although real-time bus location details and service alerts were still out of commission.

The outage grounded flights, backed up border crossings and disrupted hospitals across Canada on Friday.

Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

In a statement on its website, CrowdStrike said it was "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

"This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," the statement read.

-With Canadian Press files