Two questions usually settle it, and both can be answered in a couple of minutes.

Does the same request fail for a different client? A problem that follows one client is theirs or Microsoft’s. A problem that follows you is Avvi’s.

Does a read-only request fail too? Something that can look but not change is usually a permission or a consent problem rather than an outage.

Avvi can also read Microsoft’s own service health for a client, which turns a guess into evidence.

Symptom

Something that worked yesterday fails today, and nothing obvious has changed.

Or several unrelated things fail at once, which is the pattern that most often means an outage.

Cause

A Microsoft service incident affects a client’s tenant and everything touching it, usually across several kinds of request at once.

An Avvi problem affects you across clients, and typically one kind of request rather than all of them.

A consent or permission gap affects one client and one kind of request, and reads like neither.

Fix

1. Try the same request against a different client. If it works, the problem is not Avvi.
2. Try a read-only request against the failing client. If reading works and changing does not, look at consent and permissions.
3. Ask Avvi for the service health overview for that client, and for any current issues.
4. Compare what Microsoft reports against the symptom rather than against the timing.
5. If nothing matches, open a support conversation from the Help drawer.

Step four matters more than it looks. An incident happening at the same time is not the same as an incident causing this, and the impact text has to match the symptom.

If something doesn’t look right

If service health cannot be read for that client, the usual cause is the client’s own consent rather than your access.

If every client fails the same way at the same time, that is Avvi rather than Microsoft, and it is worth reporting immediately rather than investigating.

If a single client fails everything including reads, check consent before assuming an outage.

To report it, open a support conversation from the Help drawer with the client, the request, what it returned, and whether another client behaves the same way.

FAQ

Q: How do I tell an outage from a permission problem?

A: A permission problem lets you read and not change. An outage usually stops both.

Q: Microsoft reports an incident at the same time. Is that the cause?

A: Only if what the incident describes matches what you are seeing.

Q: Can Avvi tell me what Microsoft is reporting?

A: Yes, for a client, provided their consent covers it.