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Post Outage Status Updates in Slack or Teams

When something breaks, people stop reading long threads and start asking the same question: is it fixed yet? A good update answers that in a few lines, in the same place, on a schedule. This guide gives you a small update format, a short emoji key, and the Slack and Teams steps for keeping the latest update where everyone will see it.

Miles Crawford

Miles Crawford

5 min read
A chat window with a pinned amber status card at the top and a column of older update cards marked with red, amber, wrench and green icons, beside a clock with an arrow to the next update
This image was generated with AI

The update format

Send every update in the same order, so readers learn where to look. This is our suggested layout, not a Slack or Microsoft format:

  1. Status line. One emoji, one word, and the time of the update.
  2. What people see. The effect in plain words, such as "the dashboard will not load for some users". Describe what is observed, not a guess at the cause.
  3. What we are doing. One sentence on the current step and who is on it.
  4. What you can do. A workaround, or "nothing needed from you".
  5. Next update. A clock time. If you will not have news by then, say so at that time anyway.

Keep each update short enough to read without scrolling. Post a new update each time instead of rewriting the old one, so the channel keeps an honest timeline.

A short emoji key

Emoji help readers scan a busy channel. Keep the set small and say what each one means in the first message. Our suggestion:

  • 🔴 Investigating: we know about it and have not found the cause.
  • 🟡 Working on it: a fix or workaround is in progress.
  • 🔧 Fix is out: a change has been made and we are watching it.
  • 🟢 Resolved: everything we track is back to normal.

Always put a word next to the emoji, such as 🔴 Investigating, because colors are hard to tell apart for some readers and a bare emoji can be missed. Our accessibility guide explains why. Do not use 🟢 until you have checked, since a premature green is worse than a late one.

Keep the latest update findable in Slack

Use one channel for the problem and keep updates there. Slack lets you pin an important message to a channel, which adds it to the channel's Pins tab, and lets any channel member edit the channel topic.

  1. Post your update in the channel.
  2. On desktop, hover over the message and click the three dots icon. Then choose Pin to channel. On some plans it sits under Organize.
  3. When you post the next update, open the Pins tab, hover over the old one, click the three dots icon, and choose Un-pin from channel, so the pinned message is always the latest.
  4. Put the current status in the channel topic. Click the channel name in the header, hover over Topic, click Edit, and enter something like "🟡 Working on it. Next update 3:30 PM". Slack says topics can be up to 250 characters and can include emoji.

Ask people to reply in a thread under an update if they have questions, so the channel stays readable. Slack describes threads as a way to discuss a message without cluttering the channel.

Keep the latest update findable in Teams

In a Teams channel you can send an announcement, which Microsoft describes as a way to make a message stand out. You can also mark a message as important.

  1. In the channel's Posts tab, start a new post and select the Announcement icon. The exact place depends on your channel layout, and Microsoft's article covers both.
  2. Type your status line as the headline, then add the rest of the update below it. You can change the background color with Color scheme or upload an image.
  3. To flag a regular message instead, select Actions and apps, then Set delivery options, then Important. The message shows the word IMPORTANT! in the chat. You can set it before sending, or after sending by editing the message.

Microsoft says announcements are available only in channels, not in group or 1:1 chats. If your incident chat is a group chat, use the Important flag instead. Because only the newest update matters most, post a fresh one each time and use the headline for the status.

What not to put in a status update

A chat update is quick and informal, and that is also its limit. If your work is customer-facing, regulated, or covered by a required process, check those rules first.

  • Do not guess at the cause in a channel others will read or quote. Say what you observe and what you are doing.
  • Do not post personal details about customers or colleagues. Refer to a ticket or record number instead.
  • Do not treat the chat message as the official notice. If your company has a status page, an on-call process, or a required notification to customers or regulators, the chat points to it and does not replace it.
  • Do not use emoji for the serious part. A cheerful emoji next to bad news reads as flippant. Say what happened in words.
  • Do not promise a fix time you cannot keep. Promise the next update time.

We are not offering incident-response or compliance advice here. The format and the emoji key are communication habits, and the rules for what you may say belong to your employer.

Close it out

When the problem is over, post one last update that says what was affected, when it ended, and where to ask questions. Un-pin the old update and clear the status from the topic. If your team likes a quick acknowledgment, ask people to react with ✅ once they have read the final message. Our shift handoff guide covers passing an open problem to the next person, and best reaction emojis for work lists a few more reactions that read clearly at small sizes.

Sources

Checked October 14, 2026. The Slack and Teams steps follow each product's own help articles. The update format and the emoji key are our suggestions.