4 ms·

So users who join Teams calls but refuse to login cannot call 911, and die. Seems in line with the general Teams ethos to be honest.

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
Unless Teams is abusing private APIs or acting in other nefarious ways, this is 1000% a problem with Android itself. It shouldn’t be possible to break emergency service call operation through normal usage (or even naive usage) of the public APIs on the system. To blame Teams here is completely backwards.
- lultimouomo 4y ago
  Of course it is an Android problem. But as someone who is forced to use Teams, it is hard not to see irony in the situation.
- repler 4y ago
  Most underrated comment on the thread.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I believe this is the result of two problems. One is the fact Teams registers phone service providers over and over again, the other is that Android didn't pick the right phone account for a while. The Teams issue will cause generic connectivity issues because Teams says "I can call this number!" but then can't; the Android issue is an emergency issue because the Teams app shouldn't indicate the ability to call emergency services but Android tries to use Teams regardless. Even if Google fixes the 911 bug, users may still be unable to call if Microsoft hadn't fixed the registration issue. Both problems should be fixed by now, but it's possible Google and Microsoft haven't updated every single device out there. It's also possible a different bug has shown up.
  - rkangel 4y ago
    I understand this, but there is still an architecture issue here: It should not be possible for installed applications (even malicious ones) to prevent calling the emergency services using the cellular network In the worst case it might try some other options first, but whatever is registered or set up the phone should use the SIM information to call on the network. The network operators have a load of regulation to meet (and special prioritisation of emergency call channels etc.) so why do the phone makers not? Teams is a cause of this problem, but we're talking about it because it's a widely installed app. What other niche VoIP or similar applications are also causing this problem? The whole value we are sold of the restrictive "app" model is it is meant to protect the phone user from things the app might do.
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      I think we all agree it shouldn't. If I remember correctly, the code had special cases for emergency services just so this wouldn't happen. That said, if I install a carrier's app on my tablet that enables calling and adds the necessary emergency services support, I don't see why it couldn't be used as the fallback for emergency services. Sometimes I have WiFi but no mobile signal (VoWiFi is finicky as hell) so if I need to reach emergency services, an "internal dialer only" approach would actually prevent me from getting help more than it solves the problem. The code was buggy and not tested enough. Teams didn't specify that it could handle emergency calls. The method that sorts the apps that are capable of dealing with emergency phone numbers simply forgot to verify that the numbers in the list were all emergency capable: https://medium.com/@mmrahman123/how-a-bug-in-android-and-microsoft-teams-could-have-caused-this-users-911-call-to-fail-6525f9ba5e63 https://medium.com/@mmrahman123/how-a-bug-in-android-and-mic... If I install a dialer, I expect it to be able to dial 112/999/911. I don't expect it to try to re/activate the vendor dialer I disabled, switch my system settings to give it its call permissions back, and call the number. Hell, with multiple dialers, this behaviour may even cause a loop by itself. Bugs in the core framework can't be fixed by hardcoding specific dialers, you'll only hardcode the buggy, often barely updated dialers. Even after my phone goes EOL, I can fix problems like these by simply installing a better, fixed dialer, and that's a pretty good feature in my opinion.
  - willbudd 4y ago
    Allowing one app to register more than one phone service provider smells like an Android API bug. Allowing an unlimited number definitely is a bug. Allowing the corresponding integer to overflow and... well... do we really need to argue this point? A phone OS should never have to rely on good app behavior to not collapse like a house of cards. Much less one made by a corporation with a 71% worldwide market share.
    - jeroenhd 4y ago
      The OS was bugged. The method that fetches the phone service providers for emergency services returned a sorted list of all service providers. Had the necessary filters been in place, the index issue wouldn't even have become a problem. The integer overflow issue was part of a very flawed last resort branch of a piece of sorting code. It did underflow, but the underflow happened in a piece of code that basically sorted two objects by their memory addresses at that point. There was no way to recover from that, the problem should've been caught way before instead. It's awful that code this important is this buggy, but no code is entirely bug free and hard coding behaviour would only hard code the bug further. This is a problem that can only be solved with higher standards, better testing, and better code analysis tools.
- tormeh 4y ago
  Of course this is an Android issue, but it's also extremely typical of Teams to be an ill-behaved app.
theshrike79 4y ago
Teams is the app whose main proposition is "it's free with our O365 subscription". Feature-wise it's a pain in the ass every day.
- macintux 4y ago
  For the past several weeks it has frequently been failing to register mouse clicks. Thank goodness our team mostly uses Slack instead. What a shitshow.

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago

Unless Teams is abusing private APIs or acting in other nefarious ways, this is 1000% a problem with Android itself. It shouldn’t be possible to break emergency service call operation through normal usage (or even naive usage) of the public APIs on the system. To blame Teams here is completely backwards.

lultimouomo 4y ago
Of course it is an Android problem. But as someone who is forced to use Teams, it is hard not to see irony in the situation.
repler 4y ago
Most underrated comment on the thread.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I believe this is the result of two problems. One is the fact Teams registers phone service providers over and over again, the other is that Android didn't pick the right phone account for a while. The Teams issue will cause generic connectivity issues because Teams says "I can call this number!" but then can't; the Android issue is an emergency issue because the Teams app shouldn't indicate the ability to call emergency services but Android tries to use Teams regardless. Even if Google fixes the 911 bug, users may still be unable to call if Microsoft hadn't fixed the registration issue. Both problems should be fixed by now, but it's possible Google and Microsoft haven't updated every single device out there. It's also possible a different bug has shown up.
- rkangel 4y ago
  I understand this, but there is still an architecture issue here: It should not be possible for installed applications (even malicious ones) to prevent calling the emergency services using the cellular network In the worst case it might try some other options first, but whatever is registered or set up the phone should use the SIM information to call on the network. The network operators have a load of regulation to meet (and special prioritisation of emergency call channels etc.) so why do the phone makers not? Teams is a cause of this problem, but we're talking about it because it's a widely installed app. What other niche VoIP or similar applications are also causing this problem? The whole value we are sold of the restrictive "app" model is it is meant to protect the phone user from things the app might do.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    I think we all agree it shouldn't. If I remember correctly, the code had special cases for emergency services just so this wouldn't happen. That said, if I install a carrier's app on my tablet that enables calling and adds the necessary emergency services support, I don't see why it couldn't be used as the fallback for emergency services. Sometimes I have WiFi but no mobile signal (VoWiFi is finicky as hell) so if I need to reach emergency services, an "internal dialer only" approach would actually prevent me from getting help more than it solves the problem. The code was buggy and not tested enough. Teams didn't specify that it could handle emergency calls. The method that sorts the apps that are capable of dealing with emergency phone numbers simply forgot to verify that the numbers in the list were all emergency capable: https://medium.com/@mmrahman123/how-a-bug-in-android-and-microsoft-teams-could-have-caused-this-users-911-call-to-fail-6525f9ba5e63 https://medium.com/@mmrahman123/how-a-bug-in-android-and-mic... If I install a dialer, I expect it to be able to dial 112/999/911. I don't expect it to try to re/activate the vendor dialer I disabled, switch my system settings to give it its call permissions back, and call the number. Hell, with multiple dialers, this behaviour may even cause a loop by itself. Bugs in the core framework can't be fixed by hardcoding specific dialers, you'll only hardcode the buggy, often barely updated dialers. Even after my phone goes EOL, I can fix problems like these by simply installing a better, fixed dialer, and that's a pretty good feature in my opinion.
- willbudd 4y ago
  Allowing one app to register more than one phone service provider smells like an Android API bug. Allowing an unlimited number definitely is a bug. Allowing the corresponding integer to overflow and... well... do we really need to argue this point? A phone OS should never have to rely on good app behavior to not collapse like a house of cards. Much less one made by a corporation with a 71% worldwide market share.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    The OS was bugged. The method that fetches the phone service providers for emergency services returned a sorted list of all service providers. Had the necessary filters been in place, the index issue wouldn't even have become a problem. The integer overflow issue was part of a very flawed last resort branch of a piece of sorting code. It did underflow, but the underflow happened in a piece of code that basically sorted two objects by their memory addresses at that point. There was no way to recover from that, the problem should've been caught way before instead. It's awful that code this important is this buggy, but no code is entirely bug free and hard coding behaviour would only hard code the bug further. This is a problem that can only be solved with higher standards, better testing, and better code analysis tools.
tormeh 4y ago
Of course this is an Android issue, but it's also extremely typical of Teams to be an ill-behaved app.

theshrike79 4y ago

Teams is the app whose main proposition is "it's free with our O365 subscription". Feature-wise it's a pain in the ass every day.

macintux 4y ago
For the past several weeks it has frequently been failing to register mouse clicks. Thank goodness our team mostly uses Slack instead. What a shitshow.