8 ms·

In big companies I just don’t see the point of Slack over MS Teams as they are quite similar and Teams is very low friction as it integrates with the rest of Of

by kfk 6y ago

In big companies I just don’t see the point of Slack over MS Teams as they are quite similar and Teams is very low friction as it integrates with the rest of Office 365. Slack has better API and that’s great but what would be other serious competitive advantages? It almost seems to me that if you want to target big companies you need a competitor for the Office 365 platform and not “only” a competitor to one of its apps.

shyn3 6y ago
This is what Slack really screwed up. We use 12 different meeting tools, it's absurd I know, and if Slack worked it would be great. You start a chat and you can't add someone to the chat once it's started. So you create a new chat and add a member to it. Now you decide to hop on a call and you need to invite someone else, and that wasn't an option. But today, you can add another team member to the call. You figure out it's a vendor issue but you can't get your vendor on the call because they don't have a Slack account, and there isn't a link to share for just that one screenshare/conference. So you are left with inviting your vendor into your Slack space which you don't want to do or move to another solution.
- specialist 6y ago
  "You start a chat and you can't add someone to the chat once it's started. ..." Yup. Those deficiencies are unforgivable. I wonder what chat program the employees of Slack use.
  - ludamad 6y ago
    Probably writing their own /s
    - jjeaff 6y ago
      That would be a hillarious discovery.
  - Andys 6y ago
    No need for chat when you have an office to collaborate in!
grovellogic 6y ago
How much of the office 365 platform is truly needed for work? Developers have been avoiding it for years, it is an old bloated piece of software, that many companies stick with because it is the status quo.
- addicted 6y ago
  Office 365 is completely new and different. If you’re ok with the apps, then it provides a ton of value for a fraction of the price others do. I mean, Slack itself is almost as expensive as O365 which offers Office (online and offline) and a ton of other apps and features in addition to Teams.
- TheOperator 6y ago
  There are more workers than software developers. Specialised version of Word and Excel are literally provided in the CPA exam. The general concept of having an integrated "suite" of office software compatible with eachother, G-suite or o365, is also very appealing.
- ksk 6y ago
  What is obvious is no single person requires all of it, and everyone uses a different subset of features so its nice to have everything in one package. The integration with their admin cloud service allows easy management of the software in terms of deployment, compliance and everything else. I agree it is bloated and there is significant vendor lock-in from MS, but there is nothing comparable IMHO. I think it would easily cost $100 mil to duplicate all the features.
- bsder 6y ago
  Companies stick with it because of Exchange. Office 365 means Microsoft gets to manage email problems in return for money. Everything else comes along for the ride. We spend probably 20 hours every month on the phone with them managing various issues. My CEO has asked if we could run our own email server and I have refused every single time for the simple reason that we would now spend 40 hours per month on the same email issues since both source and destination of the complaint would be company internal. AND we would be fighting getting our email delivered because Google and Microsoft basically dump your email in the trash for not coming from Microsoft or Google. No thanks. Pay Microsoft. They're the least bad in the space.
ponker 6y ago
Teams is utterly devoid of charm. If your goal is to "send this string to Jim Bob" then Teams works just as well as Slack but if you want an application that's enjoyable to use for multiple hours per day, Teams is not the droid you're looking for.
- foepys 6y ago
  I don't care about charm in my chat application. It is supposed to deliver text and media to one or more recipients in real-time. I don't need stickers, emojis, reactions gifs, or memes. A chat is not my main application, not even in my top 10. If it doesn't work as expected, I will try the next. There is literally 0 loyalty involved in my company.
  - kyawzazaw 6y ago
    How many employees are in your company? Are they all technically inclined? Switching from one to tool to another frequently is quite a drain, imo.
  - cwsx 6y ago
    My core problem with this comes down to UX. I don't think that falls under 'charm' but Teams feels horrible to use in comparison to Slack. As an example, when switching to Teams to reply to a message why does it focus the search bar instead of the chat window? How often do users search (as their first focussed action) in comparison to using the chat window? Teams seems to be full of these minor UX annoyances that all add up to make Teams a chore to use. Slack has done a much better job on UX (in my opinion).
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  Sounds like a feature to me. Aside from the poor experience on mobile, I’d be happier still using IRC. But I’m probably not most people.
  - elkos 6y ago
    I love using IRC via the Element/matrix solution. It covers my needs and its pretty effective for what I use it for.

by kfk 6y ago

shyn3 6y ago

This is what Slack really screwed up. We use 12 different meeting tools, it's absurd I know, and if Slack worked it would be great. You start a chat and you can't add someone to the chat once it's started. So you create a new chat and add a member to it. Now you decide to hop on a call and you need to invite someone else, and that wasn't an option. But today, you can add another team member to the call. You figure out it's a vendor issue but you can't get your vendor on the call because they don't have a Slack account, and there isn't a link to share for just that one screenshare/conference. So you are left with inviting your vendor into your Slack space which you don't want to do or move to another solution.

specialist 6y ago
"You start a chat and you can't add someone to the chat once it's started. ..." Yup. Those deficiencies are unforgivable. I wonder what chat program the employees of Slack use.
- ludamad 6y ago
  Probably writing their own /s
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    That would be a hillarious discovery.
- Andys 6y ago
  No need for chat when you have an office to collaborate in!

grovellogic 6y ago

How much of the office 365 platform is truly needed for work? Developers have been avoiding it for years, it is an old bloated piece of software, that many companies stick with because it is the status quo.

addicted 6y ago
Office 365 is completely new and different. If you’re ok with the apps, then it provides a ton of value for a fraction of the price others do. I mean, Slack itself is almost as expensive as O365 which offers Office (online and offline) and a ton of other apps and features in addition to Teams.
TheOperator 6y ago
There are more workers than software developers. Specialised version of Word and Excel are literally provided in the CPA exam. The general concept of having an integrated "suite" of office software compatible with eachother, G-suite or o365, is also very appealing.
ksk 6y ago
What is obvious is no single person requires all of it, and everyone uses a different subset of features so its nice to have everything in one package. The integration with their admin cloud service allows easy management of the software in terms of deployment, compliance and everything else. I agree it is bloated and there is significant vendor lock-in from MS, but there is nothing comparable IMHO. I think it would easily cost $100 mil to duplicate all the features.
bsder 6y ago
Companies stick with it because of Exchange. Office 365 means Microsoft gets to manage email problems in return for money. Everything else comes along for the ride. We spend probably 20 hours every month on the phone with them managing various issues. My CEO has asked if we could run our own email server and I have refused every single time for the simple reason that we would now spend 40 hours per month on the same email issues since both source and destination of the complaint would be company internal. AND we would be fighting getting our email delivered because Google and Microsoft basically dump your email in the trash for not coming from Microsoft or Google. No thanks. Pay Microsoft. They're the least bad in the space.

ponker 6y ago

Teams is utterly devoid of charm. If your goal is to "send this string to Jim Bob" then Teams works just as well as Slack but if you want an application that's enjoyable to use for multiple hours per day, Teams is not the droid you're looking for.

foepys 6y ago
I don't care about charm in my chat application. It is supposed to deliver text and media to one or more recipients in real-time. I don't need stickers, emojis, reactions gifs, or memes. A chat is not my main application, not even in my top 10. If it doesn't work as expected, I will try the next. There is literally 0 loyalty involved in my company.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  How many employees are in your company? Are they all technically inclined? Switching from one to tool to another frequently is quite a drain, imo.
- cwsx 6y ago
  My core problem with this comes down to UX. I don't think that falls under 'charm' but Teams feels horrible to use in comparison to Slack. As an example, when switching to Teams to reply to a message why does it focus the search bar instead of the chat window? How often do users search (as their first focussed action) in comparison to using the chat window? Teams seems to be full of these minor UX annoyances that all add up to make Teams a chore to use. Slack has done a much better job on UX (in my opinion).
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
Sounds like a feature to me. Aside from the poor experience on mobile, I’d be happier still using IRC. But I’m probably not most people.
- elkos 6y ago
  I love using IRC via the Element/matrix solution. It covers my needs and its pretty effective for what I use it for.