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I loathe Teams. Slack started right, IRC on steroids, then enhanced it like a web app. Teams was done the typical Microsoft way. Seeing a competitor that exist

I loathe Teams. Slack started right, IRC on steroids, then enhanced it like a web app. Teams was done the typical Microsoft way. Seeing a competitor that exists, not learning from it, but making a poor response. Teams wouldn’t get off the ground if companies weren’t already so entrenched with MS. Skype for Business (poor rebranding) made more sense for what it was to do. Teams is a monstrosity of Slack (without the simple automation? I haven’t seen anything like that) + a piece of Dropbox sort of (toss your documents in it) + Sharepoint, there’s a concept of channels, conversations, groups, meetings (that don’t end unless you force them to, I’ve had windows open for days before realizing it didn’t end when the meeting does), wiki, note taking, ... like, I can’t even figure it out sometimes.

Lutger 6y ago
Teams is basically a different interface for sharepoint with video + chat on top, modeled after slack. They seem to have thought: slack is cool because it has integrations, let's do that even better by giving our customers an iframe into all their ms apps! It is pretty amazing that it is so successful. But a lot of people have a really hard time just finding things. Like, on the level of how to open a program and find the right documents. Somehow the solution of merging everything into one 'teams' works out, even if the experience is extremely horrid and feels like going back ten years in time.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  I'd second your UX comment (I find it to be a mix of okay sub-systems but horrible connections between them), but also the other users' comments about the advantages over Lync/Skype for Business. My work place introduced Teams after Lync was deprecated. We really got into using it during the start of the current pandemic, but almost 100% for video meetings. Teams' "Teams" feature isn't a place to chat freely, it's more like a Yammer (something like MS's workplace Twitter) with its posts and comments. This works decently well to keep topic separate. What's weird to me is that that feature is entirely separate from "chats", which is entirely separate from "calls" (which I've only had to open to answer a missed call; why not put it into the chat?). Since a major use of Teams are meetings via calendar events it'd be great to be able to see all my events within Teams ... but nope, got to start up the Outlook app for that. Integration is still a bit of a pain point with Teams (or MS stuff in general). What you can grant them is that at least most of the time thing at least kind of work (audio quality is fine, can always log in - looks like they hyper focused on removing blockers before anything else, which is a decent strategy. I just hope they'll polish the UX a lot in the coming years. I've never used slack, but from what I've heard it seems to be like Teams has already eclipsed it a bit and I think it's going to continue to do so.
  - tatersolid 6y ago
    > Since a major use of Teams are meetings via calendar events it'd be great to be able to see all my events within Teams ... but nope, got to start up the Outlook app for that. The Calendar button in Teams shows everything on your Exchange calendar, including non-Teams entries. If that button isn’t there, I suspect your corporate IT have messed with the Teams settings for your org for some reason. Probably some other poorly conceived Outlook calendar plug-in like Salesforce that wants to “capture” activity on the calendar but would be blind to modifications made in Teams UI, so they turn it off. Or maybe you are still on-premise for Exchange? The Teams-Exchange integration is server-side, and won’t work with on-prem Exchange unless your admins have set up hybrid mode correctly.
harrygeez 6y ago
I like to think of Teams as Skype for Business on steroids. If you look at it from that angle it's a much better product. I dislike Skype for Business with a passion.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Skype for business was great. That's because it was Skype, which they acquired. But unfortunately they then proceeded to completely destroy the non-enterprise Skype with the most braindead UI change I've ever seen, and completely neglect Skype for business for years.
  - murkle 6y ago
    Skype for Business was a different acquisition (Lync) which got renamed (2015) https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/why-do-i-see-skype-for-business-when-i-m-using-lync-50935112-4978-46b8-b2ad-9dd7b81365bf https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/why-do-i-see-skyp...
- dagw 6y ago
  I feel that for one on one chat and calling, Skype for Business was great, and better than teams. For groups and project wide chat Teams is better.

Lutger 6y ago

Teams is basically a different interface for sharepoint with video + chat on top, modeled after slack. They seem to have thought: slack is cool because it has integrations, let's do that even better by giving our customers an iframe into all their ms apps! It is pretty amazing that it is so successful. But a lot of people have a really hard time just finding things. Like, on the level of how to open a program and find the right documents. Somehow the solution of merging everything into one 'teams' works out, even if the experience is extremely horrid and feels like going back ten years in time.

solarkraft 6y ago
I'd second your UX comment (I find it to be a mix of okay sub-systems but horrible connections between them), but also the other users' comments about the advantages over Lync/Skype for Business. My work place introduced Teams after Lync was deprecated. We really got into using it during the start of the current pandemic, but almost 100% for video meetings. Teams' "Teams" feature isn't a place to chat freely, it's more like a Yammer (something like MS's workplace Twitter) with its posts and comments. This works decently well to keep topic separate. What's weird to me is that that feature is entirely separate from "chats", which is entirely separate from "calls" (which I've only had to open to answer a missed call; why not put it into the chat?). Since a major use of Teams are meetings via calendar events it'd be great to be able to see all my events within Teams ... but nope, got to start up the Outlook app for that. Integration is still a bit of a pain point with Teams (or MS stuff in general). What you can grant them is that at least most of the time thing at least kind of work (audio quality is fine, can always log in - looks like they hyper focused on removing blockers before anything else, which is a decent strategy. I just hope they'll polish the UX a lot in the coming years. I've never used slack, but from what I've heard it seems to be like Teams has already eclipsed it a bit and I think it's going to continue to do so.
- tatersolid 6y ago
  > Since a major use of Teams are meetings via calendar events it'd be great to be able to see all my events within Teams ... but nope, got to start up the Outlook app for that. The Calendar button in Teams shows everything on your Exchange calendar, including non-Teams entries. If that button isn’t there, I suspect your corporate IT have messed with the Teams settings for your org for some reason. Probably some other poorly conceived Outlook calendar plug-in like Salesforce that wants to “capture” activity on the calendar but would be blind to modifications made in Teams UI, so they turn it off. Or maybe you are still on-premise for Exchange? The Teams-Exchange integration is server-side, and won’t work with on-prem Exchange unless your admins have set up hybrid mode correctly.

harrygeez 6y ago

I like to think of Teams as Skype for Business on steroids. If you look at it from that angle it's a much better product. I dislike Skype for Business with a passion.

globular-toast 6y ago
Skype for business was great. That's because it was Skype, which they acquired. But unfortunately they then proceeded to completely destroy the non-enterprise Skype with the most braindead UI change I've ever seen, and completely neglect Skype for business for years.
- murkle 6y ago
  Skype for Business was a different acquisition (Lync) which got renamed (2015) https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/why-do-i-see-skype-for-business-when-i-m-using-lync-50935112-4978-46b8-b2ad-9dd7b81365bf https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/why-do-i-see-skyp...
dagw 6y ago
I feel that for one on one chat and calling, Skype for Business was great, and better than teams. For groups and project wide chat Teams is better.