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Do people actually enjoy using Teams? For me, it’s a good video conferencing system, but everything else it does makes me want to tear my hair out. It’s got to

Do people actually enjoy using Teams? For me, it’s a good video conferencing system, but everything else it does makes me want to tear my hair out. It’s got to the point that I’ve set a permanent away message of “I don’t read Teams messages, please contact me on mail or Slack” just to make sure that I don’t have to spend any more time in it than I have to. (I’ve mentioned this before on HN, but Teams’ lack of native popups that means that I can’t turn them off with DND mode during a presentation makes it fundamentally untrustable software.)

stefan_ 6y ago
This is such a weird article. 99.9% the reason any organization is using Teams is because they got it for free with their Office 365. I get it, they worked on it, they want it to be great. It's not. It's just an anti-competitive bundle.
- probably_wrong 6y ago
  > 99.9% the reason any organization is using Teams is because they got it for free with their Office 365. In the specific case of my team, we use Teams because we were told (warned? threatened?) that Skype for Business would be discontinued[1]. Otherwise, we would have completely ignored it. [1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/skype-for-business-online-to-be-retired-in-2021/ba-p/777833 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...
  - baq 6y ago
    if there's one thing that's worse than Teams it's Lync. there's only one thing i like about it - the global Win+F4 mute keyboard shortcut.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      Yeah. Though it’s a little bit damning that the best thing you can say about Teams is that it isn’t Lync/Skype for Business.
    - aksss 6y ago
      How much of that is tech management issues though? I mean, in past life we implemented the whole lync stack of servers, SBCs, etc., and it worked great. We had a few older employees that were highly skeptical of the conversion (a phone's a phone, right??) but completely changed their tune once they got used to clicking on phone numbers to dial, simultaneous ring, etc. We couldn't have done that if the fundamental performance wasn't taken care of. The system took a lot of tuning but I can't but think that implementation poor implementation/management of the stack was a bigger problem for Lync than the actual system itself. I'm blaming the sysadmins. ;)
    - thewhitetulip 6y ago
      I currently use Lync and despite all Teams flaws I'm trying to convince my coworkers to stop Lync/webex meetings when Teams meeting work fine and it comes with an Android app so audio issues will be fewer
- harrygeez 6y ago
  I don't know why people keep saying it as if it's something new. It's basically an upgrade/replacement from Skype for Business, feature for feature. Both weren't great but it's still much better than Skype for Business on the Mac. I'll take it.
paxys 6y ago
Exactly. The best parts of Teams are the ones I was already using perfectly fine with Lync/Skype. The rest of the interface, chat rooms, apps and everything else are atrocious.
alkonaut 6y ago
It's better than Skype and Lync so that immediately makes it good enough for most. I find it to look and work like a re-skinned slack. It's like Chrome vs Firefox if you ask me. It does the same things in pretty much the same way. > lack of native popups that means that I can’t turn them off with DND What is popping up? Toast notifications?
- fnord123 6y ago
  Yes. Teams does not honour osx toast do not disturb settings (open right hand side pane and scroll up to reveal Nightshift and DND).
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Teams uses their own notification system (at least on macOS) which: 1) looks terrible 2) does not behave like a standard OS notification so you can't swipe on the trackpad to dismiss it nor does it appear on the lockscreen (if your system is configured to display notifications on it) 3) is an always-open window (though invisible when not in use) but it still appears in the "window" menu and you can focus on it (seriously WTF? why not just create the window when a notification is displayed and destroy it right after) 4) takes up a lot more space while not delivering any more information than what a standard system notification would deliver
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    The wonder of Electron apps
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      It’s not even an Electron problem - Electron apps can still access the OS’ native notification system. This is an incompetence problem, just like all the other shortcomings of Teams.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    but it still appears in the "window" menu and you can focus on it Of my complaints I might have with Teams, this is the one that raises the temperature of my blood a bit every time I see it. The fact that you can focus on it particularly pisses me off because when I Cmd-Tab to the Teams main window there is nothing in that window that appears to have focus. You have to click on the main window before ti becomes useful. ::eye_roll::
cheph 6y ago
> Do people actually enjoy using Teams? It is quite horrible, but if you have no alternative to it then it is viable. Slack has it's issues also and to be frank the threads in Teams work significantly better than in Slack. In Slack threads feels like a really bad afterthought (which it is) but in teams it is all there is which is better. I would like something better than Teams, but I will take teams over nothing every day of the week.
- sefrost 6y ago
  What's the difference between threads in Slack and Teams? They seem almost exactly the same to me. That being - one level of replies to a message.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  I find Slacks threads as an afterthought a lot more palatable than Teams’ messages as an afterthought. Everything in teams is split between the teams and chat section, and combined with everyone creating a whole group for literally everything, it’s impossible to keep track.
rkangel 6y ago
> Do people actually enjoy using Teams? Yes, I do. I think it's great. I agree that it's a bit of a resource hog, and I agree that the search isn't particularly wonderful, but none of those impact my day-to-day experience (which is about 50% in Teams at the moment). Some things that I like: * The 'conversation' system works extremely well to keep discussion grouped by topic so you don't get the Slack issue of having to read every message of the last 3 days to see the 25% that relate to you. Yes Slack has threads, but I have yet to encounter a channel where they were used consistently well. * The seamless transition from chatting to voice/video chatting smooths co-working. We have several team members who have joined since the start of lock-down and the low barrier to starting a video call smooths the process of me supporting them and helping them feel part of a team. * We are a consultancy so the multiple 'Teams' concept maps well on to each client project giving us good organisation of conversation and data. The performance issue does rear it's head when I'm screen sharing - my WfH solution involves an x240 plugged into a large monitor and it struggles to both encode that and do whatever else I want to do. Zoom is similar but not as bad. Otherwise it works well.

stefan_ 6y ago

This is such a weird article. 99.9% the reason any organization is using Teams is because they got it for free with their Office 365. I get it, they worked on it, they want it to be great. It's not. It's just an anti-competitive bundle.

probably_wrong 6y ago
> 99.9% the reason any organization is using Teams is because they got it for free with their Office 365. In the specific case of my team, we use Teams because we were told (warned? threatened?) that Skype for Business would be discontinued[1]. Otherwise, we would have completely ignored it. [1] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/skype-for-business-online-to-be-retired-in-2021/ba-p/777833 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...
- baq 6y ago
  if there's one thing that's worse than Teams it's Lync. there's only one thing i like about it - the global Win+F4 mute keyboard shortcut.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Yeah. Though it’s a little bit damning that the best thing you can say about Teams is that it isn’t Lync/Skype for Business.
  - aksss 6y ago
    How much of that is tech management issues though? I mean, in past life we implemented the whole lync stack of servers, SBCs, etc., and it worked great. We had a few older employees that were highly skeptical of the conversion (a phone's a phone, right??) but completely changed their tune once they got used to clicking on phone numbers to dial, simultaneous ring, etc. We couldn't have done that if the fundamental performance wasn't taken care of. The system took a lot of tuning but I can't but think that implementation poor implementation/management of the stack was a bigger problem for Lync than the actual system itself. I'm blaming the sysadmins. ;)
  - thewhitetulip 6y ago
    I currently use Lync and despite all Teams flaws I'm trying to convince my coworkers to stop Lync/webex meetings when Teams meeting work fine and it comes with an Android app so audio issues will be fewer
harrygeez 6y ago
I don't know why people keep saying it as if it's something new. It's basically an upgrade/replacement from Skype for Business, feature for feature. Both weren't great but it's still much better than Skype for Business on the Mac. I'll take it.

paxys 6y ago

Exactly. The best parts of Teams are the ones I was already using perfectly fine with Lync/Skype. The rest of the interface, chat rooms, apps and everything else are atrocious.

alkonaut 6y ago

It's better than Skype and Lync so that immediately makes it good enough for most. I find it to look and work like a re-skinned slack. It's like Chrome vs Firefox if you ask me. It does the same things in pretty much the same way. > lack of native popups that means that I can’t turn them off with DND What is popping up? Toast notifications?

fnord123 6y ago
Yes. Teams does not honour osx toast do not disturb settings (open right hand side pane and scroll up to reveal Nightshift and DND).
Nextgrid 6y ago
Teams uses their own notification system (at least on macOS) which: 1) looks terrible 2) does not behave like a standard OS notification so you can't swipe on the trackpad to dismiss it nor does it appear on the lockscreen (if your system is configured to display notifications on it) 3) is an always-open window (though invisible when not in use) but it still appears in the "window" menu and you can focus on it (seriously WTF? why not just create the window when a notification is displayed and destroy it right after) 4) takes up a lot more space while not delivering any more information than what a standard system notification would deliver
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  The wonder of Electron apps
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    It’s not even an Electron problem - Electron apps can still access the OS’ native notification system. This is an incompetence problem, just like all the other shortcomings of Teams.
- mikestew 6y ago
  but it still appears in the "window" menu and you can focus on it Of my complaints I might have with Teams, this is the one that raises the temperature of my blood a bit every time I see it. The fact that you can focus on it particularly pisses me off because when I Cmd-Tab to the Teams main window there is nothing in that window that appears to have focus. You have to click on the main window before ti becomes useful. ::eye_roll::

cheph 6y ago

> Do people actually enjoy using Teams? It is quite horrible, but if you have no alternative to it then it is viable. Slack has it's issues also and to be frank the threads in Teams work significantly better than in Slack. In Slack threads feels like a really bad afterthought (which it is) but in teams it is all there is which is better. I would like something better than Teams, but I will take teams over nothing every day of the week.

sefrost 6y ago
What's the difference between threads in Slack and Teams? They seem almost exactly the same to me. That being - one level of replies to a message.
Aeolun 6y ago
I find Slacks threads as an afterthought a lot more palatable than Teams’ messages as an afterthought. Everything in teams is split between the teams and chat section, and combined with everyone creating a whole group for literally everything, it’s impossible to keep track.

rkangel 6y ago

> Do people actually enjoy using Teams? Yes, I do. I think it's great. I agree that it's a bit of a resource hog, and I agree that the search isn't particularly wonderful, but none of those impact my day-to-day experience (which is about 50% in Teams at the moment). Some things that I like: * The 'conversation' system works extremely well to keep discussion grouped by topic so you don't get the Slack issue of having to read every message of the last 3 days to see the 25% that relate to you. Yes Slack has threads, but I have yet to encounter a channel where they were used consistently well. * The seamless transition from chatting to voice/video chatting smooths co-working. We have several team members who have joined since the start of lock-down and the low barrier to starting a video call smooths the process of me supporting them and helping them feel part of a team. * We are a consultancy so the multiple 'Teams' concept maps well on to each client project giving us good organisation of conversation and data. The performance issue does rear it's head when I'm screen sharing - my WfH solution involves an x240 plugged into a large monitor and it struggles to both encode that and do whatever else I want to do. Zoom is similar but not as bad. Otherwise it works well.