Microsoft outage impacting emails.
A worldwide Microsoft filtering issue may quarantine or block some Hail emails before they reach inboxes.
Kia ora all,
We want to make you aware of a worldwide Microsoft email filtering issue that has been affecting delivery to some Microsoft-managed inboxes.
Over recent weeks, Microsoft has introduced changes to its email filtering. In some cases, these updates have incorrectly flagged legitimate emails as spam or phishing. When this happens, messages can be quarantined, redirected, or blocked before they appear in the inbox, even though they have left Hail successfully.
This can affect addresses such as:
Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online accounts used by schools and organisations
What this means for Hail Mail
If you have sent newsletters or notices and some recipients using Microsoft email services cannot find them, it is usually because the message has been filtered after it leaves Hail, as part of Microsoft’s own screening processes. In other words, the email can be sent successfully from Hail, but then handled differently within Microsoft’s environment before it reaches the recipient’s inbox.
What Hail is doing
At Hail, we take delivery reliability seriously, and we are known for being proactive when issues like this arise. As soon as we became aware of the Microsoft filtering changes, we moved quickly to reduce the impact for schools and organisations.
The steps we have taken to combat this include strengthening email authentication and sender reputation signals, refining sending infrastructure, and rolling out additional protections designed to help Microsoft consistently recognise Hail Mail as safe and legitimate.
It will take time for Microsoft to fix this issue and for our changes to take effect.
What you can do right now
While these improvements take effect there are a few practical steps that can help:
1) Ask recipients to check spam, junk, and quarantine
For Microsoft 365 users, emails may be held in quarantine rather than appearing in the inbox or junk.
2) Add Hail as a safe sender (Outlook web)
Recipients can add Hail as a safe sender using these steps:
Log into Outlook via a web browser
Click the Settings cog in the top right corner
Select Mail - Junk email
Under Safe senders and domains, click Add
Enter hail.to and save
3) Using Gmail to read a Microsoft email account (Gmail mail client)
Some recipients access their Microsoft email address through the Gmail app or Gmail web (for example, their @outlook or school Microsoft 365 account added as a mail account). In that case, these steps can help ensure Hail messages are easier to find:
In Gmail, open the email (if it is in Spam or Promotions).
Click Report not spam (if shown).
Click the three dots (More) and select Filter messages like these.
Create a filter for the sender domain hail.to (or the From address used by your school).
Choose options such as Never send it to Spam and (optionally) Apply the label, then save the filter.
If the message is not appearing in Gmail at all, it may still be filtered or quarantined by Microsoft before Gmail can retrieve it. In those cases, the best fix is still to add Hail as a safe sender in Outlook and, for Microsoft 365 users, to check quarantine.
Reference
For more context on the broader Microsoft issue, you can read:
Thanks for your patience
We know how important reliable communication is for schools and communities, and we really appreciate your patience while Microsoft’s filtering changes settle and our improvements roll out. We’ll continue to keep delivery performance front and centre, and we are committed to making sure your messages reach the people who need them.
~ Hail Support Team