5 ms·

I'm a college professor, and I'll share my perspective. For one, Zoom did just work. (At least as a participant, rather than an organizer.) I tried it out, and

I'm a college professor, and I'll share my perspective. For one, Zoom did just work. (At least as a participant, rather than an organizer.) I tried it out, and it immediately worked. It did what all of us were expecting, with no fuss. I also tried MS Teams. It seems designed with a different philosophy: that you use the software to do many different things, and you want them all integrated. (For example, it posted my meetings automatically to my Outlook calendar. I had never used this calendar before, and was only dimly aware that it existed.) Moreover, it seems that the expected setup is a bunch of people, all at the same workplace, who communicate with each other consistently. My needs are different, with wildly disparate use cases: a departmental meeting; classes to teach; an online conference (https://www.daniellitt.com/agonize/); https://www.daniellitt.com/agonize/); an online social gathering. Many of the people with whom I communicate don't work for the same employer. And I don't want to configure all of these "teams" in advance. That said, I tried to get MS Teams up and running, to teach my class. This involved multiple emails back and forth to our tech support (it seems that I can't set up a "team" myself; I have to ask IT to do it for me). It didn't have its own whiteboard functionality so I had to download and run some separate software. And, then, in the end... it didn't work. I was trying to teach a class, but my students couldn't see what I was doing. I had no idea why.

gameofcode 7y ago
You're right, MS Teams is definitly better placed as an org-wide communication/collaboration tool, not an external one. They really need to make it easier to communicate with people in external orgs, the org switcher is my biggest complaint. FWIW, IT can allow people in certain groups to make their own teams, it's an admin setting.
- Onawa 7y ago
  Working within the US NIH, we are forced to submit a ticket for creating any new teams and the entire Teams/Office 365 ecosystem is entirely crippled for us. All new features take forever to be approved and brought online, as well as additional connectors and apps having to go through an extensive 6+ month-long vetting process before being approved. Makes using Teams quite a hassle, but with Skype for Business being the only other approved option for internal chat, it's better than nothing.
  - basch 7y ago
    Those are all organizational decisions, and not out of the box defaults. Microsoft is trying very hard to persuade organizations not to make those decisions. Completely free teams creation does come at a cost. It makes data governance much more complicated. People creating duplicate places for things they didnt know already existed. A lack of naming convention, to be able to analyze what exists. Microsoft is pushing for people to just be able to get things done, at the expense of organization.
    - technion 7y ago
      When they mention "connectors and apps", right now there is a very serious amount of phishing fraud going on involving one click links that ask you to authorise a malicious app. Users see a "please click yes" prompt, they never have to enter their password and they think that sounds fine. I wish Microsoft would try a lot harder in persuading businesses to make the decision to take oauth approvals out of the user hands, because the volume is at a point where I really feel anyone following the "empower the user" discussion almost certainly has a compromised mailbox in their business.
lostmsu 7y ago
It does not "just work" for me. First, it required a separate client, when even Skype does not. Second, it does not support my browser.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  Your unstated criteria for "just work" are "just work in browser", which differs from the definition used by the comment you're replying to. That is not universally shared among others, including the non-technical folks that Zoom is being widely adopted by.
  - stingraycharles 7y ago
    You’re being downvoted fairly heavily, which I think is unfair. Even though some other people might not agree, it’s a valid argument to make.
  - aequitas 7y ago
    This is what I was getting at with my parent comment, it "just works" for everyone. But it doesn't fit some of the niches technical or privacy minded people have. And in the end, we are bound by the common denominator. I can push my open source privacy respecting solution all I want. But unless it "just works" for the lowest tech user I'm at a loss. There's a parallels here with security in the uphill battle to get users to respect the caveats of the solution they choose.
gentleman11 7y ago
Zoom doesn’t just work. If the students want privacy, they are just helpless. Edit: downvoted for speaking up for student rights. Sorry if it is inconvenient for the teachers
- 867-5309 7y ago
  universities are organisations, which all force some incarnation of an internet usage policy. better still, the students are paying an arm and a leg for their lack of privacy. wouldn't it be great for the non-technical end user if these Just Works™ software could just bypass firewalls by way of VPNs, common ports, obfuscated servers or the like?
- impendia 7y ago
  > If the students want privacy, they are just helpless. This isn't true actually. As a student, send the following email: "Hi Professor, I just read this webpage [link], which outlines some privacy concerns with Zoom. I know some other classes are running Software X, could we try that instead?" My university isn't mandating Zoom. Indeed, they recommended several software packages, of which their top recommendation was Blackboard. (Which is what I've been using so far. I have mostly joined others' Zoom meetings; I've only initiated them for a D+D game I'm participating in.) MS Teams was their second recommendation as I recall, and Zoom was below that. At least at my university -- and I expect that this is typical -- individual faculty members are deciding how to best fulfill their own responsibilities. And I have emphasized to my students that I have never done this before, and that I'm happy to change what I'm doing if people have good suggestions.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > "Hi Professor, I just read this webpage [link], which outlines some privacy concerns with Zoom. I know some other classes are running Software X, could we try that instead?" Hi [Student], I appreciate your concern; however, our university has conducted a thorough audit of this software and found that it satisfies our needs. We will continue using it for our lectures. Regards, Dr. [Professor] Senior tenured chair of [Department], distinguished lecturer, [University]
btilly 7y ago
And, then, in the end... it didn't work. I was trying to teach a class, but my students couldn't see what I was doing. I had no idea why. Were you on a mac? If so, you may have encountered https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_o365admin-mso_teams-mso_o365b/macos-catalina-and-teams-screen-sharing/28a38edc-d149-4c32-95cd-95c4d87dbf13?messageId=000ad0d2-2025-400b-8fe1-f8285dc0f488&page=1 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_... which has been outstanding since October and has no sign will be fixed properly any time soon. The workaround is quit programs until you find the one that somehow causes Microsoft Teams to not understand that it really does have permissions. For me it seemed to be XCode. But it could be others...here is a partial list: - Harvest – Confirmed - Sonos – Confirmed - Cisco VPN – Issue reported by others - Microsoft To-Do – Confirmed - Contacts+ (formerly FullContact) – confirmed - Apple Photos – confirmed - Teamviewer – reported by others - Prompt/popup for app review from App Store – still have questions here. This seemed to be it, but haven’t been able to confirm - Brackets – reported by others - Citrix Workspace Version: 19.10.2.41 (1910) – confirmed This is an example of why "just works" is so important.
int_19h 7y ago
Teams specifically is the spiritual successor to Skype for Business / Lync / Office Communicator - its main benefit is integrating with Outlook, Exchange, OneNote, and SharePoint. If it's not deployed with that in mind, that's a lot of wasted effort, IMO.
nextweek2 7y ago
Did you try Microsoft Teams live events? Which seems aimed at your use case.

gameofcode 7y ago

You're right, MS Teams is definitly better placed as an org-wide communication/collaboration tool, not an external one. They really need to make it easier to communicate with people in external orgs, the org switcher is my biggest complaint. FWIW, IT can allow people in certain groups to make their own teams, it's an admin setting.

Onawa 7y ago
Working within the US NIH, we are forced to submit a ticket for creating any new teams and the entire Teams/Office 365 ecosystem is entirely crippled for us. All new features take forever to be approved and brought online, as well as additional connectors and apps having to go through an extensive 6+ month-long vetting process before being approved. Makes using Teams quite a hassle, but with Skype for Business being the only other approved option for internal chat, it's better than nothing.
- basch 7y ago
  Those are all organizational decisions, and not out of the box defaults. Microsoft is trying very hard to persuade organizations not to make those decisions. Completely free teams creation does come at a cost. It makes data governance much more complicated. People creating duplicate places for things they didnt know already existed. A lack of naming convention, to be able to analyze what exists. Microsoft is pushing for people to just be able to get things done, at the expense of organization.
  - technion 7y ago
    When they mention "connectors and apps", right now there is a very serious amount of phishing fraud going on involving one click links that ask you to authorise a malicious app. Users see a "please click yes" prompt, they never have to enter their password and they think that sounds fine. I wish Microsoft would try a lot harder in persuading businesses to make the decision to take oauth approvals out of the user hands, because the volume is at a point where I really feel anyone following the "empower the user" discussion almost certainly has a compromised mailbox in their business.

lostmsu 7y ago

It does not "just work" for me. First, it required a separate client, when even Skype does not. Second, it does not support my browser.

floatingatoll 7y ago
Your unstated criteria for "just work" are "just work in browser", which differs from the definition used by the comment you're replying to. That is not universally shared among others, including the non-technical folks that Zoom is being widely adopted by.
- stingraycharles 7y ago
  You’re being downvoted fairly heavily, which I think is unfair. Even though some other people might not agree, it’s a valid argument to make.
- aequitas 7y ago
  This is what I was getting at with my parent comment, it "just works" for everyone. But it doesn't fit some of the niches technical or privacy minded people have. And in the end, we are bound by the common denominator. I can push my open source privacy respecting solution all I want. But unless it "just works" for the lowest tech user I'm at a loss. There's a parallels here with security in the uphill battle to get users to respect the caveats of the solution they choose.

gentleman11 7y ago

Zoom doesn’t just work. If the students want privacy, they are just helpless. Edit: downvoted for speaking up for student rights. Sorry if it is inconvenient for the teachers

867-5309 7y ago
universities are organisations, which all force some incarnation of an internet usage policy. better still, the students are paying an arm and a leg for their lack of privacy. wouldn't it be great for the non-technical end user if these Just Works™ software could just bypass firewalls by way of VPNs, common ports, obfuscated servers or the like?
impendia 7y ago
> If the students want privacy, they are just helpless. This isn't true actually. As a student, send the following email: "Hi Professor, I just read this webpage [link], which outlines some privacy concerns with Zoom. I know some other classes are running Software X, could we try that instead?" My university isn't mandating Zoom. Indeed, they recommended several software packages, of which their top recommendation was Blackboard. (Which is what I've been using so far. I have mostly joined others' Zoom meetings; I've only initiated them for a D+D game I'm participating in.) MS Teams was their second recommendation as I recall, and Zoom was below that. At least at my university -- and I expect that this is typical -- individual faculty members are deciding how to best fulfill their own responsibilities. And I have emphasized to my students that I have never done this before, and that I'm happy to change what I'm doing if people have good suggestions.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > "Hi Professor, I just read this webpage [link], which outlines some privacy concerns with Zoom. I know some other classes are running Software X, could we try that instead?" Hi [Student], I appreciate your concern; however, our university has conducted a thorough audit of this software and found that it satisfies our needs. We will continue using it for our lectures. Regards, Dr. [Professor] Senior tenured chair of [Department], distinguished lecturer, [University]

btilly 7y ago

And, then, in the end... it didn't work. I was trying to teach a class, but my students couldn't see what I was doing. I had no idea why. Were you on a mac? If so, you may have encountered https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_o365admin-mso_teams-mso_o365b/macos-catalina-and-teams-screen-sharing/28a38edc-d149-4c32-95cd-95c4d87dbf13?messageId=000ad0d2-2025-400b-8fe1-f8285dc0f488&page=1 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_... which has been outstanding since October and has no sign will be fixed properly any time soon. The workaround is quit programs until you find the one that somehow causes Microsoft Teams to not understand that it really does have permissions. For me it seemed to be XCode. But it could be others...here is a partial list: - Harvest – Confirmed - Sonos – Confirmed - Cisco VPN – Issue reported by others - Microsoft To-Do – Confirmed - Contacts+ (formerly FullContact) – confirmed - Apple Photos – confirmed - Teamviewer – reported by others - Prompt/popup for app review from App Store – still have questions here. This seemed to be it, but haven’t been able to confirm - Brackets – reported by others - Citrix Workspace Version: 19.10.2.41 (1910) – confirmed This is an example of why "just works" is so important.

int_19h 7y ago

Teams specifically is the spiritual successor to Skype for Business / Lync / Office Communicator - its main benefit is integrating with Outlook, Exchange, OneNote, and SharePoint. If it's not deployed with that in mind, that's a lot of wasted effort, IMO.

nextweek2 7y ago

Did you try Microsoft Teams live events? Which seems aimed at your use case.