Slack suffers global outage as workers return after the holidays

Slack, the online messaging platform that services more than 10 million people, experienced a worldwide outage Monday for over two hours. The company said that "all hands" were on deck to investigate the issue.

"Customers may experience issues connecting to Slack to loading channels at this time. Our team is on the case and we will keep you posted. Apologies for any disruption," the company said in a statement. 

Users began reporting issues with Slack around 10 a.m. ET, with most reporting connectivity issues, according to Downdetector.com. Slack first addressed the incident at 10:14 a.m. and by 12:29 p.m., the platform seemed to be returning to normal. "While the issue is largely still ongoing, we believe some customers may see improvement in connecting to Slack after a refresh," the company said. 

The outage affected Slack users in Germany, India, the U.K. and Japan. Although, it's unclear how many of its 10 million users were affected.

This isn't the first time Slack has seen a major outage while companies rely on remote work during the coronavirus pandemic. The company saw widespread performance issues in both October and November, with both being resolved within several hours.

In December, Salesforce said it planned to acquire Slack for $27.7 billion. The deal is an attempt to compete with industry powerhouse Microsoft.