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At my work, we use Teams a fair bit, and I'll go out on the limb to defend it (a limb I'm quite familiar with at this point ;) ). Thinking of it as a Slack alte

At my work, we use Teams a fair bit, and I'll go out on the limb to defend it (a limb I'm quite familiar with at this point ;) ). Thinking of it as a Slack alternative is, IMO, the wrong starting point. We barely use it for chat (as we have Slack as well). Instead, we use it as a file share and central information home. Each group within a team has a channel and we use the tabs to track meeting notes, embed external calendars, and more. And importantly, we use it for file sharing. Each channel is a root point for a team-specific folder. This is helpful because storing common docs there means they are perpetually available to collaborators, as opposed to OneDrive storage, which in my experience has been very hit or miss (sahre links expiring, etc. ). People can trust that team content is there. There are downsides. It took me a few months to find my 'optimal' usage pattern, I can't have channel-specific sharing, and it takes me a while to explain the above to people on the team. It is far from perfect, but it is better than sharing a bunch of files in email threads or maintaining unofficial google docs in a Microsoft world.

inetknght 7y ago
> we use it for file sharing File sharing: apparently still a problem almost four _decades_ after the Internet was invented.
- evilotto 7y ago
  sharing information while controlling who gets to see it, who does not, making sure it is timely, making sure it is gone when it is no longer timely, and making sure all of these things continue to be the case is still a problem more than six _centuries_ after the invention of the printing press.
- checktheorder 7y ago
  Heck, it's still a problem with direct connections. Take the average Windows PC. Take the average Android phone. Take a USB cable. Plug them in together. Now copy a few thousand MP3s from the PC to the phone using nothing but stock Explorer and watch the transfer rate drop to about 1/1000th of what the wired connection should be capable of, because Microsoft made sure to assign their most inept, incapable, dumbest employees when they designed MTP.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Well, the Internet everyone uses isn't really designed for it. HTTP is a request/response model. But the model of filesharing is that I have a bunch of data and I want to send it to you, not that I have a bunch of data and I want you to ask me for it. File sharing over the internet means setting up a webserver, after which it works beautifully. But nobody wants to do that. They want to use browsers. TCP isn't asymmetric in the same way, but who's out there thinking of raw TCP as "the Internet"?
  - jmkni 7y ago
    It's a shame Torrenting gets such a bad rap. If I want to share a large file with somebody who knows what they are doing, I encrypt it, create a torrent, send them the magnet URL and then they can download it and decrypt it. No web server needed. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, people have no idea what you are on about, or even if they do, they are behind a corporate firewall with torrenting blocked/on a work machine and can't install a client.
ptx 7y ago
So essentially Microsoft's chat app is not good at chat, but you use it for file-sharing instead because Microsoft's file-sharing app is not good at file-sharing?
- addicted 7y ago
  It's good at chat. It's not good at persistent chat rooms. It's great for ad hoc groups of people to chat or for direct chat. It's also great for meetings. Where it gets cumbersome is in the persistent chat room management. And as someone who is not a fan of chat rooms as a replacement for emails (I can't even filter or categorize information) I'm glad about that part.
  - WiseWeasel 7y ago
    Email is great and all, but not for regular topical discussions that may interest dynamic groups of people. A persistent, shared and searchable history and threading enables more effective discussion on a larger scale than practical with email.
    - addicted 7y ago
      Fair enough. Teams sucks for the case where you have a limited topic that you want adynamically changing user list to be able to access for an extended period of time. I’ll take that in return for it not trying to replace email, which, at the very least has folders, and rules, and starring (nearly every implementation has some version of this), multiple clients, the ability to access from non GUI clients, etc. I really don’t understand at what point we decided that email sucked and really what we needed was a proprietary solution that are up a ton of RAM and hardly had any ability to customise or optimize in ways thateven non technical people have successfully managed wth email. For all the non email like features, I.e. instant chatting with an individual, or a group of people, Teams works great.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
johnbatch 7y ago
Doesn’t it just create SharePoint sites for each team on the backend and store the files in SharePoint? Even on 1:1 chat sharing a file just uploads it to OneDrive and uses OneDrive links.
- pwarner 7y ago
  Yep
- Spooky23 7y ago
  That’s why it’s a big electron app, it stitches together all of these disparate O365 components. It exists to empower the bureaucracy in a company to stop any migration away from their platform. Users are pretty meh about it, but legal and compliance are big fans, because their process stays the same.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Yes, each Team sits on top of an Office 365 Group so comes with all of the stuff that you get with an 0365 Group (SP Site, Planner etc.). NB All Teams have 0365 Groups but not all 0365 Groups have a Team.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Yes, Teams is a SharePoint client from the SharePoint team. Arguably the best SharePoint client ever from the SharePoint team. (The chat storage even gets stored in the SharePoint backend and you can add Teams chat as widgets on a SharePoint frontend.)
screye 7y ago
That is what everyone I know uses it for too. It is almost like git, in how every sub team has their own private branch. Honestly, any important discussion that gets too chatty for teams, should be a meeting. That being said, everyone in my team generally sits on the same floor, so collaborating physically isn't an issue. I am sure a few of teams's shortcomings will become more evident once we start collaborating with remote teams.

inetknght 7y ago

> we use it for file sharing File sharing: apparently still a problem almost four _decades_ after the Internet was invented.

evilotto 7y ago
sharing information while controlling who gets to see it, who does not, making sure it is timely, making sure it is gone when it is no longer timely, and making sure all of these things continue to be the case is still a problem more than six _centuries_ after the invention of the printing press.
checktheorder 7y ago
Heck, it's still a problem with direct connections. Take the average Windows PC. Take the average Android phone. Take a USB cable. Plug them in together. Now copy a few thousand MP3s from the PC to the phone using nothing but stock Explorer and watch the transfer rate drop to about 1/1000th of what the wired connection should be capable of, because Microsoft made sure to assign their most inept, incapable, dumbest employees when they designed MTP.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
Well, the Internet everyone uses isn't really designed for it. HTTP is a request/response model. But the model of filesharing is that I have a bunch of data and I want to send it to you, not that I have a bunch of data and I want you to ask me for it. File sharing over the internet means setting up a webserver, after which it works beautifully. But nobody wants to do that. They want to use browsers. TCP isn't asymmetric in the same way, but who's out there thinking of raw TCP as "the Internet"?
- jmkni 7y ago
  It's a shame Torrenting gets such a bad rap. If I want to share a large file with somebody who knows what they are doing, I encrypt it, create a torrent, send them the magnet URL and then they can download it and decrypt it. No web server needed. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, people have no idea what you are on about, or even if they do, they are behind a corporate firewall with torrenting blocked/on a work machine and can't install a client.

ptx 7y ago

So essentially Microsoft's chat app is not good at chat, but you use it for file-sharing instead because Microsoft's file-sharing app is not good at file-sharing?

addicted 7y ago
It's good at chat. It's not good at persistent chat rooms. It's great for ad hoc groups of people to chat or for direct chat. It's also great for meetings. Where it gets cumbersome is in the persistent chat room management. And as someone who is not a fan of chat rooms as a replacement for emails (I can't even filter or categorize information) I'm glad about that part.
- WiseWeasel 7y ago
  Email is great and all, but not for regular topical discussions that may interest dynamic groups of people. A persistent, shared and searchable history and threading enables more effective discussion on a larger scale than practical with email.
  - addicted 7y ago
    Fair enough. Teams sucks for the case where you have a limited topic that you want adynamically changing user list to be able to access for an extended period of time. I’ll take that in return for it not trying to replace email, which, at the very least has folders, and rules, and starring (nearly every implementation has some version of this), multiple clients, the ability to access from non GUI clients, etc. I really don’t understand at what point we decided that email sucked and really what we needed was a proprietary solution that are up a ton of RAM and hardly had any ability to customise or optimize in ways thateven non technical people have successfully managed wth email. For all the non email like features, I.e. instant chatting with an individual, or a group of people, Teams works great.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago

johnbatch 7y ago

Doesn’t it just create SharePoint sites for each team on the backend and store the files in SharePoint? Even on 1:1 chat sharing a file just uploads it to OneDrive and uses OneDrive links.

pwarner 7y ago
Yep
Spooky23 7y ago
That’s why it’s a big electron app, it stitches together all of these disparate O365 components. It exists to empower the bureaucracy in a company to stop any migration away from their platform. Users are pretty meh about it, but legal and compliance are big fans, because their process stays the same.
arethuza 7y ago
Yes, each Team sits on top of an Office 365 Group so comes with all of the stuff that you get with an 0365 Group (SP Site, Planner etc.). NB All Teams have 0365 Groups but not all 0365 Groups have a Team.
WorldMaker 7y ago
Yes, Teams is a SharePoint client from the SharePoint team. Arguably the best SharePoint client ever from the SharePoint team. (The chat storage even gets stored in the SharePoint backend and you can add Teams chat as widgets on a SharePoint frontend.)

screye 7y ago

That is what everyone I know uses it for too. It is almost like git, in how every sub team has their own private branch. Honestly, any important discussion that gets too chatty for teams, should be a meeting. That being said, everyone in my team generally sits on the same floor, so collaborating physically isn't an issue. I am sure a few of teams's shortcomings will become more evident once we start collaborating with remote teams.