Microsoft Teams Troubleshooting Performance and Connection Issues

• Monitor Microsoft Teams Performance Performance
• Microsoft Teams Troubleshooting Steps
• Step 1. Compare Network Sessions
• Step 2. Compare using Device Monitoring
• Step 3. Analyze Data with Traceroute Results
• Expand the Microsoft Teams Troubleshooting Setup

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.

The Microsoft Teams Series:

• How to Monitor Microsoft Teams Issues
• Microsoft Teams Troubleshooting Performance and Connection Issues (this article)

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.

Get started with Obkio’s Free Trial!

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.

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 moments of jitter, packet loss, and latency. And even the impact on MOS Score.

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

To begin troubleshooting your Microsoft Teams performance issue, you need to first know: Is it a network problem?

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 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 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.

Skip to Step 2 for the next step.

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.

In this case, skip right to Step 3.

If the Microsoft Teams problem 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:

• 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.

• 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.

• Upgrade your Internet connection bandwidth with your ISP if you’re running out of bandwidth.

• 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 Obkio Vision Visual Traceroute

Learn how to use Obkio Vision’s Visual Traceroute tool to troubleshoot network problems with traceroutes both inside & outside your local network.

Learn more

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!

Get started for free!