Microsoft Teams Troubleshooting Performance and Connection Issues

How many times has this happened? You’re on a Microsoft Teams call, and your call disconnects, lags or freezes - so you go to Google to look up how to solve the problem. Well look no further!

If you're using Microsoft Teams, there are ways to troubleshoot those pesky performance and connection issues that are putting a damper on your team's collaboration. We’re teaching you the how to’s of Microsoft Teams troubleshooting to solve common Microsoft Teams performance issues and connection issues using Network Monitoring!

So grab your thinking cap and get ready to become a Teams troubleshooting pro!

Microsoft Teams connection issues and performance issues can be greatly affected by poor network performance. Network problems like jitter, packet loss and congestion severely affect Teams’ audio and video performance - which is why Network Monitoring is your best tool for monitoring and troubleshooting Microsoft Teams issues.

Network performance is critical to the overall performance of Microsoft Teams. Teams is a cloud-based collaboration platform that relies heavily on a stable and fast internet connection for smooth operation.

If the network performance is poor or unstable, it can cause a range of issues, including:

There are several Microsoft Teams connection issues that users may encounter, including:

• Audio and video glitches: This is a common issue where the audio or video feed in Teams meetings may lag or freeze, causing communication issues and making it difficult for team members to interact.
• Slow or intermittent Internet connection: Slow or unreliable internet connection can also cause issues with Microsoft Teams, especially when it comes to video and audio quality.
• Connectivity problems: Teams can also experience connectivity problems, preventing users from being able to access the platform entirely.
• Firewall or network restrictions: Some companies may have strict firewall or network restrictions in place, which can cause connection issues when trying to use Teams.
• Outdated software or hardware: Using outdated software or hardware can also lead to performance and connection issues in Teams.

There are several Microsoft Teams performance issues that can be caused by poor network performance that users may encounter, including:

• Slow loading times: Teams may take a long time to load, which can be frustrating and time-consuming.
• High resource usage: Teams can use a lot of system resources, such as CPU and RAM, which can slow down the user's device and cause performance issues.
• Video and audio quality issues: Poor quality audio and video during calls or meetings can be a performance issue that can affect the overall user experience.
• Application freezing or crashing: Teams may freeze or crash unexpectedly, causing users to lose progress and interrupting collaboration.
• Syncing issues: Teams may have difficulty syncing with other apps and services, causing delays and communication issues.
• Inconsistent performance: Teams may work fine for some users but perform poorly for others, making it challenging to identify the root cause of the issue.
• Outages: Microsoft Teams outages lead to complete loss of connectivity and can be caused my poor internal or external network performance.

It is important to troubleshoot these performance issues to ensure that Microsoft Teams operates smoothly and efficiently.

If you're a user wanting to troubleshoot Microsoft Teams issues, there are some basic troubleshooting steps you can follow to resolve common issues. These steps include:

1. Checking your Internet connection: Ensure that you have a stable and fast Internet connection. You can use an online speed test tool or Obkio's Network Monitoring Free Trial to check your Internet speed and latency. If your internet connection is slow or unstable, it can cause performance issues in Teams.
2. Restarting Teams: Closing and restarting Teams can help to resolve any temporary issues. This is a simple step that often resolves common issues, so it's worth trying before moving on to more advanced troubleshooting steps.
3. Checking for updates: Ensure that Teams is up to date with the latest version. You can check for updates within Teams under the "About" section in the Settings menu. Updates often include bug fixes and performance improvements that can help to resolve issues.
4. Clearing the Teams cache: Clearing the Teams cache can resolve performance issues. You can do this by going to the Teams settings and selecting "Clear Cache." The cache stores temporary data and settings that Teams uses, and clearing it can help to resolve issues caused by corrupted or outdated data.
5. Adjusting video and audio settings: Lowering the video resolution or disabling the camera or microphone can help to improve performance during Teams calls and meetings. This is especially important if you're experiencing issues with video or audio quality.
6. Disabling hardware acceleration: Disabling hardware acceleration can help to reduce the load on your system's graphics card and improve Teams performance. You can disable this under the "General" section in the Teams settings. This step is especially useful if you're experiencing issues with Teams freezing or crashing.

By following these basic troubleshooting steps, you can resolve common issues and ensure a smooth collaboration experience in Microsoft Teams. If you continue to experience issues after trying these steps, you may need to reach out to your network administrator or IT specialist for more advanced troubleshooting steps.

However, if you're a network administrator or IT specialist, you may need to dig deeper into the issue and identify the root cause. So you're in the right place!

In this article, we'll cover more advanced troubleshooting steps that you can take to identify and resolve performance and connection issues in Microsoft Teams. These steps include monitoring network metrics, optimizing network performance, analyzing traceroutes, and more.

By following these steps, you can identify and resolve complex issues and ensure a reliable and efficient collaboration experience for your users. So, keep reading this article to learn more about troubleshooting Microsoft Teams performance and connection issues as a network administrator or IT specialist.

To first identify Microsoft Teams performance issues, you need to continuously monitor your network and Microsoft Teams connection quality. To do so, we recommend a tool like Obkio Network Performance Monitoring software.

A network monitoring tool continuously monitors end-to-end Microsoft Teams performance to diagnose network issues for you, and collect the data you need to start troubleshooting.

• 14-day free trial of all premium features
• Deploy in just 10 minutes
• Monitor performance in all key network locations
• Measure real-time network metrics
• Identify and troubleshoot live network problems

To begin monitoring Microsoft Teams network performance with Obkio, you need to deploy Monitoring Agents which continuously measure network and Teams performance in all network locations where Teams is being used.

In our previous article in our Microsoft Teams series, How to Monitor Microsoft Teams Issues, we talk about setting up the Monitoring Agents, so you can refer to that article for deployment.

But essentially, to collect the data you need to translate, you’ll need:

• 1 Azure Agent: Microsoft Teams stores customer data in Microsoft Azure’s global cloud locations. To monitor Microsoft Teams, deploy a Microsoft Azure Agent deployed in the Data Center located closest to you.

• 1 other Public Monitoring Agent: To compare performance up to the Internet and quickly identify if the problem is global or specific to Teams. This will be great information for later in the troubleshooting process. You can use an AWS Agent or Google Cloud Agent.

• 1 Local Agent: Installed in the targeted office location experiencing the Microsoft Teams performance issues. There are several Agent types available (all with the same features), and they can be installed on MacOS, Windows, Linux and more.

This same setup can also be used for:

• Microsoft network monitoring
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 performance monitoring
• Microsoft Azure network monitoring

Once your Monitoring Agents are deployed, they’ll start continuously exchanging synthetic UDP traffic between each other to monitor Microsoft Teams performance, this is called a Network Monitoring Session.

To identify ant Microsoft Teams issues, you’ll want to let the Agents run and collect data. If you’re unlucky enough, you’ll see the performance issues after just a few minutes, but we recommend letting the Agents collect data for at least 3 hours.

Obkio's Network Response Time Graph and VoIP Quality Graph showing Latency, Jitter, and Packet Loss

When the Agents start exchanging traffic, they start monitoring and collecting performance data, which you can see on the Network Response Time Graph. If you’re experiencing Microsoft Teams performance or connection issues, you’ll be able to see them in the graph. You can see the data for network metrics like:

• Latency: Latency is the time it takes for data to travel from the user's device to the Teams server and back. High latency can cause delays in audio and video during calls and meetings, leading to a poor user experience.
• Packet Loss: Packet loss is the percentage of data packets that are lost during transmission over the network. High packet loss can cause audio and video quality issues during Teams calls and meetings.
• Jitter: Jitter is the variation in delay between data packets. High jitter can cause audio and video to be out of sync during Teams calls and meetings.
• Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can be transmitted over a network in a given amount of time. Low bandwidth can cause audio and video to be of poor quality or not work at all.
• Network Congestion: Network congestion occurs when there is a high volume of data traffic on the network. This can cause delays, packet loss, and poor audio and video quality during Teams calls and meetings.

From here, we’ll start with the 3 Microsoft Teams troubleshooting steps.

To begin troubleshooting your Microsoft Teams connection or erformance issue, you need to first know: Is it a network problem? Some performance and connection issues may not be caused by network performance at all, so it's important to know where to direct your troubleshooting efforts.

To do this, you’ll need to compare the monitoring sessions between the Azure Public Monitoring Agent and the other Public Monitoring Agent you deployed.

In the screenshot below, you’ll see an example of a Network Session with no Microsoft Teams performance or connections issues. As a reference, this is what it looks like when the network isn’t the cause of your performance problem.

If it’s not a network issue, it might be a user issue. In this case, you can install a Monitoring Agent directly on the workstation of the user experiencing the Microsoft Teams issues to get a performance perspective from their point-of-view.

If you still don’t find a network problem at this point, it may just be a problem that can be solved directly on the user's workstation. Microsoft Teams, like several other hardware-intensive unified communication systems, uses lots of resources (CPU, RAM).

Obkio also monitors these important resource metrics so you can understand if your Microsoft Teams is lacking resources.

In the screenshot below is an example of a network problem on both network sessions.

This means that the Microsoft Teams performance or connection issue is on a network segment that is common to both network sessions. Therefore the problem is broader, not exclusive to just Microsoft Teams, and affects all services and applications that depend on the network.

This could be in the LAN, the firewall or the local loop Internet connection.

In the screenshot below is an example of a Microsoft Teams issue happening on only one network session.

This means that the network problem is happening specifically towards that specific location on the Internet and that the problem is further away.

If the Microsoft Teams issue is happening on both network sessions, compare that data using Obkio’s Device Monitoring feature to further understand if the performance issue is happening on your end, or over the Internet, in your Service Provider’s network.

When you compare your previous performance data with the Device Monitoring metrics, if you find CPU or Bandwidth issues, this likely means that the Microsoft Teams problem is on your end - so you need to address it.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Look into the firewall logs to understand if the traffic going through your network is legitimate or not. Illegitimate traffic might be due to a security breach (data exfiltration), or mass data backup happening during business hours.
2. Manage priorities in your Firewall to prioritize Microsoft Teams traffic and reduce the impact on Microsoft Teams during periods of congestion. This way, all the traffic towards or from Microsoft Teams will be prioritized first when passing through the network.
3. Upgrade your Internet connection bandwidth with your ISP if you’re running out of bandwidth.
4. Look into your device to understand why it’s missing resources and causing high CPU usage. There may be a software problem, your device may need a firmware update, the last update may be bugged, or the device may just not have enough resources available and needs to be upgraded to a bigger device.

If you don’t see any resource issues from your network devices, this is a sign that the Microsoft Teams performance issue is happening on your Service Provider’s side.

In this case, open a service ticket with your ISP with all the information you can collect so your request can be quickly escalated past 1st level support.

Obkio is going to get you all that information you need. The data you can provide is that from your dashboard in the previous steps, as well as your Traceroutes in the next step.

You can now collect information about where exactly the network problem is located so you can share that information with your Service Provider.

To do this, we’ll be using Obkio Vision, Obkio’s free Visual Traceroute tool that runs continuously to interpret Traceroute results to identify network problems in your WAN and over the Internet.

Note: If the network problem is happening on your end, you don’t need to do this step. It’ll just further confirm that conclusion.

Obkio Vision Quality Matrix

By using Traceroutes, the Network Map, and the Quality Matrix you’ll be able to identify if:

A. The problem is happening specifically towards a specific location over the Internet. So only one specific site is being affected.

B.The performance issue is on your ISP’s side and you need to open a service ticket providing as much information as you can collect.

• Contact your ISP to get technical support using the screenshots of Monitoring Sessions, Dashboards or Traceroutes in Vision.
• Share results of Live Traceroutes with your ISP using a public link.
• If your ISP wants to analyze your data further, you can create a temporary Read-Only User in your Obkio account for them.

How to Troubleshoot Networks with Visual Traceroute Tool

Learn how to use Obkio Vision’s Visual Traceroute tool to troubleshoot network problems with traceroutes in your LAN, WAN, and everything in between.

Learn more

At this point, you'll have identified if the Microsoft Teams issues are being happening in your local network or your ISP network. You'll also know what caused them, when, and why. If the issues are happening in your ISP's network, it's up to them to troubleshoot.

If the problems are happening locally, here are some more tips to follow to troubleshoot Microsoft Teams connection issues:

1. Check your Internet connection: Ensure that you have a stable and fast internet connection. You can use an online speed test tool to check your internet speed and latency.
2. Restart Microsoft Teams: Close Teams and restart the application. This can help to resolve any temporary issues.
3. Check for updates: Ensure that Teams is up to date with the latest version. You can check for updates within Teams under the "About" section in the Settings menu.
4. Clear the Teams cache: Clearing the Teams cache can resolve performance issues. You can do this by going to the Teams settings and selecting "Clear Cache."
5. Check your firewall and antivirus settings: Ensure that your firewall and antivirus software are not blocking Teams or its traffic.
6. Disable VPN: If you are using a VPN, try disabling it to see if it resolves the connection issue.
7. Check Microsoft 365 Service Health: Microsoft 365 Service Health dashboard provides information on any current or past issues with Teams. Check to see if there are any known issues. Or extend your monitoring setup for Microsoft 365 monitoring as well.

Like with the point above, there's also Microft Teams performance issues that may be happening in your local network. If you're looking for some internal troubleshooting steps for Microsoft Teams performance issues, here are some tips:

To troubleshoot Microsoft Teams performance issues, you can follow these steps:

1. Check your device specifications: Ensure that your device meets the minimum system requirements for running Teams. You can find the minimum requirements on the Microsoft Teams support website.
2. Close other applications: Close any unnecessary applications running in the background that may be using up system resources.
3. Check for updates: Ensure that Teams is up to date with the latest version. You can check for updates within Teams under the "About" section in the Settings menu.
4. Clear the Teams cache: Clearing the Teams cache can resolve performance issues. You can do this by going to the Teams settings and selecting "Clear Cache."
5. Adjust video and audio settings: Lowering the video resolution or disabling the camera or microphone can help to improve performance during Teams calls and meetings.
6. Disable hardware acceleration: Disabling hardware acceleration can help to reduce the load on your system's graphics card and improve Teams performance. You can disable this under the "General" section in the Teams settings.
7. Check your network performance: Ensure that your network is performing optimally. High latency, packet loss, and jitter can cause performance issues in Teams. You can use network assessment tools to identify and resolve these issues.

Once you’ve collected the data you need to troubleshoot your Microsoft Teams performance issues, you no longer need to worry about Teams interrupting your next meeting.

But remember, performance issues can always come back.

That’s why it’s important to keep monitoring Microsoft Teams performance ro identify and troubleshoot performance issues as soon as they happen. Install Monitoring Agents in all your network locations, and keep Obkio as your permanent Microsoft Teams monitoring and troubleshooting tool!