Wednesday October 29, 2025

Between approximately 10:00 AM and 4:52 PM PDT on October 29, 2025, some users experienced issues with Slack search. When users tried to search items, the results would not load.

We traced the problem back to our search servers, which were hit with a sudden, unexpected surge in memory usage. This increase in usage overloaded the core service responsible for search, preventing it from showing results and creating a large backlog of unprocessed search requests.

To mitigate this, we quickly restarted the search processes and added more capacity to handle the heavy load and clear the backlog.

By around 4:52 PM PDT, search functionality began displaying some results as expected. However, users still couldn't find items that were posted during the incident until we finished processing the entire backlog. This final processing step took longer, and the search service was fully caught up and returning all results by around 4:19 PM PDT on October 31, 2025.

5:16 PM PST

This issue is now resolved for all users.

• Current status and recent actions taken: The search job backlog has caught up to a healthy state. Users should now see expected results when searching for content in Slack.
• Scope: A subset of global users experienced issues with the search functionality.
• Previous impact to end users: Search results were inconsistent, missing, or out of order. Certain admin dashboards, such as "Manage members," were also affected.
• Required resolution steps: No steps required.

We apologize for any disruptions to your day.

9:51 AM PST

We are continuing to work on remediating the search backlog. Users should see ongoing improvement in search functionality as this work progresses.

• Current status and actions being taken: We are continuing to process and clear the backlog of search jobs that were incomplete as they were queued during the incident's impact period. Once cleared, older messages and content from that specific time will appear normally. New content (and content prior to this incident) is already appearing as normal in search queries.

We'll provide another update once the issue is fully resolved for all users.

11:09 AM PST

We’ve been able to restore search functionality to affected users, but are continuing to work through a backlog of incomplete search jobs.

• Current status and actions being taken: During this issue, a related backend job related to search indexing queued a number of unprocessed jobs. We’re actively working to process these requests so search results appear correctly.
• Scope: A number of search queries were failing for users globally.
• Current impact to end users: Search functionality has been restored, but some results may not appear or appear incorrectly as we work to clear the backlog.
• Known workarounds: No known workarounds at this time.

We’ll be back with another update once the search jobs are complete.

6:28 PM PST

Our work on this issue is still ongoing, but we have no new information to share just yet.

• Current status and actions being taken: We continue to observe signs of recovery, and some search functionality may be back to normal. However, some users may still experience intermittent issues, such as missing search results. We're still working hard to resolve the issue entirely.

We'll be back with another update once we have news to share.

2:00 PM PST

Our work on this issue is ongoing, but we are showing signs of recovery with the affected search features.

• Current Status and Actions: We identified a spike in backend search requests. To help mitigate the impact, we've adjusted request traffic, leading to signs of recovery. We're continuing to monitor as our work progresses.

We'll provide another update once impact is resolved for all users.

11:40 AM PST

Our investigation is still ongoing 

• Current status and actions being taken: We’re continuing our investigation into the search related errors to identify potential causes.
• Estimated time to resolution: No time to available.
• Scope: A number of search queries may be failing for users globally. 
• Current impact to end users: Issues with search functionality in Slack, including AI Search and some admin dashboards such as “Manage members”.
• Known workarounds: No known workarounds at this time.

We'll continue to provide updates every 30 minutes until the impact is resolved for all users.

11:13 AM PST

We're continuing to investigate an incident and have increased our response urgency.

• Current impact to end users: Some users may experience issues related to search, including some admin dashboards such as “Manage members”.

We'll be back with another update in 30 minutes. Thanks for your patience.

10:42 AM PST

We’re investigating an issue where some users are having trouble searching in Slack. We’ll be back with another update once we know more. 

10:32 AM PST