When you select a category of problems, such as Outlook, the next step is to select from a list of common issues. The scenarios make sense, covering Office setup, Outlook, mobile devices, webmail, and even Dynamics CRM Online. SaRA requires administrative rights to install, which is fine for BYOD and some other environments where local admin control is provided to the user, otherwise IT staff will need to help the user install and run the tool. SaRA is positioned as a tool that end users or their IT support staff can run directly on the computer that is experiencing a problem. It’s similar to the reasons behind the development of Exchange Analyzer – building tools that help customers identity common issues and fix them, without the time and expense of contacting someone else for support.

The sooner problems can be resolved (and even better, resolved by customers before they need to call Microsoft), the better it is for customers and the lower the costs are for Microsoft. Which is why SaRA exists to help identity those issues and quickly narrow the possible root causes. And as they’ve learned, a lot of support calls are generated by factors outside of Microsoft’s direct control, such as client-side issues, network connectivity issues, DNS problems, and more.

Microsoft is well aware of this, after all they take the support calls when things go wrong. Naturally you’re going to notice problems accessing and using Office 365 services from time to time. It’s true, Office 365 is a reliable, resilient service, which is remarkable considering the scale and complexity of the service. “Office 365 is an extremely reliable service…” opens the Microsoft article announcing the availability of the new Support and Recovery Assistant (SaRA).

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