The idea was to have technical problems, so I have no idea how my schedule is doing today

The online organizing app Notion was experiencing technical difficulties this morning and students, project managers and other users – like me – who depend on it to organize our calendars are experiencing small outbreaks.

The company said in a tweet at around 8:30 am Eastern time that it was “having a DNS problem, causing the site not to resolve for many users.” The company did not provide many additional details, but some have speculated that it may have to do with Notion’s web address: notion.so. The suffix “then” is the domain of the country Somalia, and a deleted tweet from Notion asked if anyone knew people in Somalia.

The app is used primarily as a collaboration tool in the workplace, but it has become popular with casual users – including teenagers at TikTok, who use it to organize their class schedules. Users complaining that they were unable to access Notion on Friday morning suggested that now may be the time for the company, which was valued at $ 2 billion in April 2020, to make offline access a priority in future releases.

At around 11 am ET, the company said that DNS issue resolved and users should begin to see the service restored. The company confirmed that it was implementing safeguards to prevent future problems in a statement emailed to The Verge:

The reason for the downtime this morning was a very unusual DNS problem that occurred at the registry operator level. Our engineers started immediately and solved the problem – we are back now. We are in contact with the registry operator and registrar who implement protocols to prevent this type of incident from recurring in the future. This was a very rare chain of events to occur.

So far my Notions page is still down, so if I’m late for a Zoom meeting today, sorry boss, I tried. I mean, what should we do, write our to-do lists on paper like old times? (I also do that, too. I have organizational problems).