6 ms·

My opinion(1), after playing a while with MS Teams: The pros : the product is quite good, let say it is good enough and much better than the status quo of rely

My opinion(1), after playing a while with MS Teams: The pros : the product is quite good, let say it is good enough and much better than the status quo of relying on emails or Whatsapp. It is integrated with the Office suite, and if I understand correctly, will be free for pro Office users. It has a handful of very interesting product decisions, like threaded replies and iframe apps. The cons : MS Teams is not as polished as Slack, the UI (especially of the chat area) is not as clear. The installation/onboarding is not as fluid. They have less apps and integrations (obviously, this is just the beginning). My guess : MS Teams will not even begin to make a dent in the almost 100% market share of Slack among startups, agencies and similar small, agile groups. The whole Office ecosystem is simply to heavy, the UX is not as great, and some integrations might be missing. On the other hand, it might win big in the entreprise segment, where Slack is less present, and where being in the Office family is not seen as a drawback but actually an sign of solidity (1) I am an independent dev, working on an app for their platform, so this is an educated guess based on my testing. I will enable Teams to connect with each other or with Slack teams through shared chat (www.smooz.io/microsoft).

pducks32 10y ago
Yea I think you describe it well there as "heavy" it doesn't feel agile. The whole concept that a single login is more fluid only has a little validity because when you login to a suite of apps you feel so overwhelmed. Logging into slack means you're logged into slack. Pretty simply and light.
- donmatito 10y ago
  Yes. I wouldn't know where to start, if I wanted to open a Team with some friends. But in organizations where they already have an Office subscription, and an IT dept to manage the tenants and accounts ? People will love it :-)
kminehart 10y ago
I'm not sure that they're actually trying to go for Slacks user base, I think they're targeting the same people they targeted for Lync and Skype for Business.
- jacques_chester 10y ago
  Or rather, they are preventing enterprise leakage to Slack, in anticipation that Slack will continue trying to expand into adjacent markets. Mind you, the only reason anyone in bubbleville has heard of Teams is because Slack had that expensively cringetastic reaction.
- donmatito 10y ago
  I agree
Spooky23 10y ago
The problem with the product is that it really exists to keep big companies on the O365 E3+ plans. Microsoft's big focus now is to retain subscription revenue. Skype and OneDrive are shit and MS is trying to bulk up the ecosystem around these products. If you work for a big company, you're not going to get approval to POC Slack, Dropbox, Webex, etc as long as you're stuck with the Microsoft all you can eat subscription. Slack is a killer threat because it displaces email. Exchange has always been the glue that holds the biggest Microsoft cash cow together.
- donmatito 10y ago
  I think you're right. Organizations who use Slack don't use email anymore. MS saw the writing on the wall, and decided to integrate an email-killer in their product suite instead of being eaten from the outside. Rather smart strategy, if you ask me.
- gwicks56 10y ago
  OneDrive ( then SkyDrive ) used to be awesome. A folder showing all my files, including the online only ones. Then they ruined it. I still don't understand why.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    They have a compulsion to recycle parts that are there. OneDrive is SharePoint, so you get much of the baggage that comes with SharePoint. They also offer feature parity with on-prem SharePoint, which kneecaps the product. The main point of that product is to block Box or Dropbox sales. It's only now getting better, in the form of a mobile app on Windows 10 only.
  - basch 10y ago
    if you are talking about the desktop client and placeholders, they will probably be coming back eventually in some form.
r00fus 10y ago
> It is integrated with the Office suite What does this mean, really? Can I start teams chats from Office? Can I see all chats/emails from a person or group? My main gripe with MS Office is that it's 2017 and they still treat Mac as an inferior platform. No delayed emails, bad handling of bullet lists, and the obvious limitations in using any groupware functionality (this I can understand). About the one good side is that I don't need X1 search, as MS Outlook uses macOS spotlight indexing which is fast compared to PC (though the search operators are weak and OS spotlight is contaminated with email results).
- basch 10y ago
  In the Office 365 world Groups are everything. Groups are a shared mailbox and a sharepoint site w/ document library. All permissions are determined by permission to the mailbox. "Integration with Office" means integration with Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync more than it means integration with Excel, Word etc. A team exists inside a group. When a file is uploaded, it really uploads to sharepoint/onedrive. Each Channel creates a new folder inside the sharepoint document library. What teams really is is a new skin over the top of sharepoint/skypelync/exchange. You have most of the same features you had in the "older" (last years new) Groups interface, plus you have a persistent chat that skype is missing. A bunch of the buttons are rearranged slightly from groups. Whats somewhat frustrating is how features and buttons are duplicated three times between a Team, a Group, and a Yammer group. You really need strong organizational policy to standardize behavior, or you will end up with chaos. It's somewhat that obvious Microsoft is trying to converge these three products until they are 100% feature complete, and then merge them into one thing. Groups are a near Yammer clone built on top of Sharepoint/Exchange, and Teams are basically the same thing, but drawn to look like Slack.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Interesting - so Slack offers external access (single channel guest) - is there any similar functionality? Given Teams is tied to Exchange groups, would it be expensive to add an external user? We deal with external companies a lot where I work and having that feature is pretty useful.

pducks32 10y ago

Yea I think you describe it well there as "heavy" it doesn't feel agile. The whole concept that a single login is more fluid only has a little validity because when you login to a suite of apps you feel so overwhelmed. Logging into slack means you're logged into slack. Pretty simply and light.

donmatito 10y ago
Yes. I wouldn't know where to start, if I wanted to open a Team with some friends. But in organizations where they already have an Office subscription, and an IT dept to manage the tenants and accounts ? People will love it :-)

kminehart 10y ago

I'm not sure that they're actually trying to go for Slacks user base, I think they're targeting the same people they targeted for Lync and Skype for Business.

jacques_chester 10y ago
Or rather, they are preventing enterprise leakage to Slack, in anticipation that Slack will continue trying to expand into adjacent markets. Mind you, the only reason anyone in bubbleville has heard of Teams is because Slack had that expensively cringetastic reaction.
donmatito 10y ago
I agree

Spooky23 10y ago

The problem with the product is that it really exists to keep big companies on the O365 E3+ plans. Microsoft's big focus now is to retain subscription revenue. Skype and OneDrive are shit and MS is trying to bulk up the ecosystem around these products. If you work for a big company, you're not going to get approval to POC Slack, Dropbox, Webex, etc as long as you're stuck with the Microsoft all you can eat subscription. Slack is a killer threat because it displaces email. Exchange has always been the glue that holds the biggest Microsoft cash cow together.

donmatito 10y ago
I think you're right. Organizations who use Slack don't use email anymore. MS saw the writing on the wall, and decided to integrate an email-killer in their product suite instead of being eaten from the outside. Rather smart strategy, if you ask me.
gwicks56 10y ago
OneDrive ( then SkyDrive ) used to be awesome. A folder showing all my files, including the online only ones. Then they ruined it. I still don't understand why.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  They have a compulsion to recycle parts that are there. OneDrive is SharePoint, so you get much of the baggage that comes with SharePoint. They also offer feature parity with on-prem SharePoint, which kneecaps the product. The main point of that product is to block Box or Dropbox sales. It's only now getting better, in the form of a mobile app on Windows 10 only.
- basch 10y ago
  if you are talking about the desktop client and placeholders, they will probably be coming back eventually in some form.

r00fus 10y ago

> It is integrated with the Office suite What does this mean, really? Can I start teams chats from Office? Can I see all chats/emails from a person or group? My main gripe with MS Office is that it's 2017 and they still treat Mac as an inferior platform. No delayed emails, bad handling of bullet lists, and the obvious limitations in using any groupware functionality (this I can understand). About the one good side is that I don't need X1 search, as MS Outlook uses macOS spotlight indexing which is fast compared to PC (though the search operators are weak and OS spotlight is contaminated with email results).

basch 10y ago
In the Office 365 world Groups are everything. Groups are a shared mailbox and a sharepoint site w/ document library. All permissions are determined by permission to the mailbox. "Integration with Office" means integration with Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync more than it means integration with Excel, Word etc. A team exists inside a group. When a file is uploaded, it really uploads to sharepoint/onedrive. Each Channel creates a new folder inside the sharepoint document library. What teams really is is a new skin over the top of sharepoint/skypelync/exchange. You have most of the same features you had in the "older" (last years new) Groups interface, plus you have a persistent chat that skype is missing. A bunch of the buttons are rearranged slightly from groups. Whats somewhat frustrating is how features and buttons are duplicated three times between a Team, a Group, and a Yammer group. You really need strong organizational policy to standardize behavior, or you will end up with chaos. It's somewhat that obvious Microsoft is trying to converge these three products until they are 100% feature complete, and then merge them into one thing. Groups are a near Yammer clone built on top of Sharepoint/Exchange, and Teams are basically the same thing, but drawn to look like Slack.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Interesting - so Slack offers external access (single channel guest) - is there any similar functionality? Given Teams is tied to Exchange groups, would it be expensive to add an external user? We deal with external companies a lot where I work and having that feature is pretty useful.