5 ms·

I personally find Teams to be an abomination. I asked my wife the other day, who isn't familiar with Slack or Teams, to look at the interfaces and tell me how

by arpyzo 6y ago

I personally find Teams to be an abomination. I asked my wife the other day, who isn't familiar with Slack or Teams, to look at the interfaces and tell me how to IM an individual. She glanced at Slack and pointed to the list of users. She looked at Teams and said "I have no idea". Slack practically invites me to reach out to people. Teams OTOH makes me want to send an email. Now you can add this tracking to the list of things I detest about Teams.

branon 6y ago
Teams is Skype, but worse. Seriously, it's just reskinned Skype with bolt-ons. You can see "skype" present in the address bar sometimes when you load Teams in a browser. The Teams desktop application (at least on Linux) has references to Skype as well. Teams routinely uses between 200 and 500 MB of memory to run, which makes it the 2nd most memory-intensive program on my computer. On top of that, it doesn't even work that well. The entire app is slow on mobile, compared with desktop/web where only some parts are slow. Feature parity across platforms is very poor. You can't even join audio calls in Firefox, let alone use video. Some of the features that work well (searching for reaction GIFs) seem unnecessary, and it's almost insulting to see the amount of add-ins and superfluous crap that's available when the core of the program/service is so lacking in comparison. The only positive thing I can say about Teams is that its integration with the rest of Microsoft's services is convenient. It's nice to be able to see my calendar in Teams without opening Outlook. Tools for scheduling/joining/managing meetings also work well. If coworkers share Microsoft documents in a Teams channel, clicking them will (sluggishly) open the document in Teams, ready for editing. Outside of integration, the search function works passably, but is painfully slow. Group audio/video calls work fine too, but then again, they also worked fine back when the app was called Skype. All of the things that work, however, are damaged by how lukewarm and _slow_ the overall experience is. Even features as basic as IM are half-baked. Not many messages fit on the screen at once, and scrolling up to see past messages is a nightmare, since messages lazy-load only when they are made visible, or the scroll bar will reset its position and snap back down to the bottom. I read the article and the bullet-pointed list of data that Teams tracks doesn't seem like all that big of a deal to me. It makes sense that analytics would be running on everything you type into Teams. Always assume anything you use for work is wiretapped to hell and back, doubly so if Big Tech is involved. I am much more concerned about the fact that I don't even get a functional IM client out of the arrangement.
- userbinator 6y ago
  As someone who has worked on thirdparty clients for IM since the days of MSN Messenger (MSNP), the degradation is sad to see and extremely obvious. The backend protocol that Teams uses is essentially MS-Skype (as opposed to the "OG Skype" binary P2P one), with some Teams-specific additions. Even the authentication token is called the "skypetoken". The only good thing about that is it should make a thirdparty Teams client relatively straightforward, given that things like https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin already exist. All the users see and complain about is the horrid sluggishness, and Electron and the "webapp everything" craze is mostly responsible for that, but the backend protocol itself is also a bloated abomination. A long time ago I wrote an MSNP client and used it right until MS finally shut down the servers a few years ago. It was a native Win32 application in a single binary <32KB and barely took any memory (at most a few MB). No audio or video, but IM and presence worked perfectly. Like HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and the other oldschool Internet protocols, MSNP is also a text-based protocol that runs directly over a socket. You could almost use it from a netcat if you really wanted to. It wasn't perfect but everything about it was in some ways sane. If I remember correctly, a single message would be a few dozen bytes of overhead. The Teams/MS-Skype protocol is a stark contrast. It runs over HTTPS, which is an advantage in some ways with the current trend of stuffing other protocols over it, but it's not like they simply took MSNP and tunneled it over HTTPS, which would've been a far saner approach --- it's radically different and everything is far less efficient and more complex to handle as a result. JSON everywhere. Each message has several hundred bytes of overhead, and more like kilobytes if you count the HTTP layer and everything below it. Things are split between .skype.com and .messenger.live.com with no real consistency. Trying to get presence to actually work reliably has been a nightmare (the official client apparently has problems with that too...) I'm not surprised there's no official documentation on the API/protocol, because it's a bloody mess. As you may guess, I have been trying to write a native client for it. Some of the features that work well (searching for reaction GIFs) seem unnecessary, and it's almost insulting to see the amount of add-ins and superfluous crap that's available when the core of the program/service is so lacking in comparison. This may be a rather controversial point, but software quality overall seems to have taken a steep nosedive not long after the whole "everyone can code/diversity/inclusion" movement took off. Yes, apparently everyone can code --- just not very well. I think things like all this proliferation of mostly-useless features are a symptom of that. We are simply seeing the results of quantity over quality in an industry which has shifted to rewarding sheer participation and "disruptive change" over a carefully deliberated path to perfection.
torbital 6y ago
Saying you and your wife find Slack superior is a bit lie preaching to the choir on these forums, no? Let me give a different anecdote. When I open up teams, I have one account, I log in and have access to all other things in the account. Basic software behavior we're all used to. When I open up Slack, it does or does not want me to login again based on if I've been on this server before. It may or may not want me to make a new account depending on if I've made one on this server before. I try all of my emails with all of my potential passwords to see if login works, if not new account time I guess? Instead of Discord were you can see all of your servers, Slack separates this all out that makes the entire user experience (at least for me) completely abysmal. Then don't even get me started with a lack of usernames and having intentionally hard-to-find ID. Again, why not do what Discord does and do Username#6789? Instead I have to search my friend 'John Doe' and hope it's the John I'm thinking of and not some random other John that I just invited to see all my business's internal discussions. To sum up my 2 cents: Teams is about the same as Zoom with some text-based chat functionality thrown in and some neat Outlook calendar integration. Slack is just Discord that is way, way worse. Comparing the two doesn't even make sense, but at least Teams does better in it's respective category.
- m463 6y ago
  that sound exactly the opposite of teams in my experience. Slack I have one account and it logs in through SSO. sidebar, message window, thread. It seems pretty cohesive, and mostly customizable. Teams I have the kitchen sink navigation experience, full of dark patterns and mediocrity. One thing I will say for teams - since they were competing with other meeting software, they did add a good direct link from calendar to teams meeting.
npteljes 6y ago
So maybe Teams has a higher barrier of entry. I don't think that it's worse because of this particular reason.
- pragmatick 6y ago
  I've never used Slack but the usability of Teams is awful. So much empty space, empty context menus, usually only one way to get anywhere. Notifications for a user can only be disabled by context menu, clicking away a notification doesn't mark the message as read, all settings are on a profile basis (no way to disable notifications for mobile only), there's no way to just stop Teams on mobile without having to sign out. The chat input editor is horrible when it comes to writing / pasting code. Video chat and calendar integration work great, though.
2rsf 6y ago
Slack has it's benefits, but many of the complaints about Teams are because of its flexibility. For example the clutter of teams channels and chats can be simplified to Slack level if used with discipline (or maybe it's even configurable). The way to IM individuals is cumbersome but consistent with other cumbersome Office products.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  My biggest complaint is that the “teams” section is in a completely separate tab from the “chat” section. I find that companies tend to gravitate toward one of the two, because it’s impossible to keep switching.
  - 2rsf 6y ago
    It is more confusing than in Slack but Slack uses a different section as well. I don't like how Slack keeps only a limited list of recent chats there, the hit-miss ratio for me is terrible and I usually need to re-search for the person I want to chat with.
    - cwhiz 6y ago
      Slack let’s you create your own sections. The default layout has channels on top and DMs on bottom, but you can put them anywhere. And that kind of thing is my run with Slack. It has answers for many UX complaints, but they are buried in settings somewhere or behind a paywall.
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    If your company does this, you just have to give up on clearing the notification badge. You'd have to click on each individual "team" and then hover over each team's new message long enough that Teams is convinced you've read it. There might be a "mark all as read" button somewhere but Microsoft certainly doesn't make it easy to find.
alkonaut 6y ago
> She glanced at Slack and pointed to the list of users. While I also hate the team UX, at least to me it looks pretty similar to Slack in the standard view. On my left when I start up is a list of all users. If I click one I have an IM session with that user. There are some other "views" in Teams (Teams view, Activities view, ...) were you in one of those?

by arpyzo 6y ago

branon 6y ago

Teams is Skype, but worse. Seriously, it's just reskinned Skype with bolt-ons. You can see "skype" present in the address bar sometimes when you load Teams in a browser. The Teams desktop application (at least on Linux) has references to Skype as well. Teams routinely uses between 200 and 500 MB of memory to run, which makes it the 2nd most memory-intensive program on my computer. On top of that, it doesn't even work that well. The entire app is slow on mobile, compared with desktop/web where only some parts are slow. Feature parity across platforms is very poor. You can't even join audio calls in Firefox, let alone use video. Some of the features that work well (searching for reaction GIFs) seem unnecessary, and it's almost insulting to see the amount of add-ins and superfluous crap that's available when the core of the program/service is so lacking in comparison. The only positive thing I can say about Teams is that its integration with the rest of Microsoft's services is convenient. It's nice to be able to see my calendar in Teams without opening Outlook. Tools for scheduling/joining/managing meetings also work well. If coworkers share Microsoft documents in a Teams channel, clicking them will (sluggishly) open the document in Teams, ready for editing. Outside of integration, the search function works passably, but is painfully slow. Group audio/video calls work fine too, but then again, they also worked fine back when the app was called Skype. All of the things that work, however, are damaged by how lukewarm and _slow_ the overall experience is. Even features as basic as IM are half-baked. Not many messages fit on the screen at once, and scrolling up to see past messages is a nightmare, since messages lazy-load only when they are made visible, or the scroll bar will reset its position and snap back down to the bottom. I read the article and the bullet-pointed list of data that Teams tracks doesn't seem like all that big of a deal to me. It makes sense that analytics would be running on everything you type into Teams. Always assume anything you use for work is wiretapped to hell and back, doubly so if Big Tech is involved. I am much more concerned about the fact that I don't even get a functional IM client out of the arrangement.

userbinator 6y ago
As someone who has worked on thirdparty clients for IM since the days of MSN Messenger (MSNP), the degradation is sad to see and extremely obvious. The backend protocol that Teams uses is essentially MS-Skype (as opposed to the "OG Skype" binary P2P one), with some Teams-specific additions. Even the authentication token is called the "skypetoken". The only good thing about that is it should make a thirdparty Teams client relatively straightforward, given that things like https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pidgin already exist. All the users see and complain about is the horrid sluggishness, and Electron and the "webapp everything" craze is mostly responsible for that, but the backend protocol itself is also a bloated abomination. A long time ago I wrote an MSNP client and used it right until MS finally shut down the servers a few years ago. It was a native Win32 application in a single binary <32KB and barely took any memory (at most a few MB). No audio or video, but IM and presence worked perfectly. Like HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and the other oldschool Internet protocols, MSNP is also a text-based protocol that runs directly over a socket. You could almost use it from a netcat if you really wanted to. It wasn't perfect but everything about it was in some ways sane. If I remember correctly, a single message would be a few dozen bytes of overhead. The Teams/MS-Skype protocol is a stark contrast. It runs over HTTPS, which is an advantage in some ways with the current trend of stuffing other protocols over it, but it's not like they simply took MSNP and tunneled it over HTTPS, which would've been a far saner approach --- it's radically different and everything is far less efficient and more complex to handle as a result. JSON everywhere. Each message has several hundred bytes of overhead, and more like kilobytes if you count the HTTP layer and everything below it. Things are split between .skype.com and .messenger.live.com with no real consistency. Trying to get presence to actually work reliably has been a nightmare (the official client apparently has problems with that too...) I'm not surprised there's no official documentation on the API/protocol, because it's a bloody mess. As you may guess, I have been trying to write a native client for it. Some of the features that work well (searching for reaction GIFs) seem unnecessary, and it's almost insulting to see the amount of add-ins and superfluous crap that's available when the core of the program/service is so lacking in comparison. This may be a rather controversial point, but software quality overall seems to have taken a steep nosedive not long after the whole "everyone can code/diversity/inclusion" movement took off. Yes, apparently everyone can code --- just not very well. I think things like all this proliferation of mostly-useless features are a symptom of that. We are simply seeing the results of quantity over quality in an industry which has shifted to rewarding sheer participation and "disruptive change" over a carefully deliberated path to perfection.

torbital 6y ago

Saying you and your wife find Slack superior is a bit lie preaching to the choir on these forums, no? Let me give a different anecdote. When I open up teams, I have one account, I log in and have access to all other things in the account. Basic software behavior we're all used to. When I open up Slack, it does or does not want me to login again based on if I've been on this server before. It may or may not want me to make a new account depending on if I've made one on this server before. I try all of my emails with all of my potential passwords to see if login works, if not new account time I guess? Instead of Discord were you can see all of your servers, Slack separates this all out that makes the entire user experience (at least for me) completely abysmal. Then don't even get me started with a lack of usernames and having intentionally hard-to-find ID. Again, why not do what Discord does and do Username#6789? Instead I have to search my friend 'John Doe' and hope it's the John I'm thinking of and not some random other John that I just invited to see all my business's internal discussions. To sum up my 2 cents: Teams is about the same as Zoom with some text-based chat functionality thrown in and some neat Outlook calendar integration. Slack is just Discord that is way, way worse. Comparing the two doesn't even make sense, but at least Teams does better in it's respective category.

m463 6y ago
that sound exactly the opposite of teams in my experience. Slack I have one account and it logs in through SSO. sidebar, message window, thread. It seems pretty cohesive, and mostly customizable. Teams I have the kitchen sink navigation experience, full of dark patterns and mediocrity. One thing I will say for teams - since they were competing with other meeting software, they did add a good direct link from calendar to teams meeting.

npteljes 6y ago

So maybe Teams has a higher barrier of entry. I don't think that it's worse because of this particular reason.

pragmatick 6y ago
I've never used Slack but the usability of Teams is awful. So much empty space, empty context menus, usually only one way to get anywhere. Notifications for a user can only be disabled by context menu, clicking away a notification doesn't mark the message as read, all settings are on a profile basis (no way to disable notifications for mobile only), there's no way to just stop Teams on mobile without having to sign out. The chat input editor is horrible when it comes to writing / pasting code. Video chat and calendar integration work great, though.

2rsf 6y ago

Slack has it's benefits, but many of the complaints about Teams are because of its flexibility. For example the clutter of teams channels and chats can be simplified to Slack level if used with discipline (or maybe it's even configurable). The way to IM individuals is cumbersome but consistent with other cumbersome Office products.

cwhiz 6y ago
My biggest complaint is that the “teams” section is in a completely separate tab from the “chat” section. I find that companies tend to gravitate toward one of the two, because it’s impossible to keep switching.
- 2rsf 6y ago
  It is more confusing than in Slack but Slack uses a different section as well. I don't like how Slack keeps only a limited list of recent chats there, the hit-miss ratio for me is terrible and I usually need to re-search for the person I want to chat with.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    Slack let’s you create your own sections. The default layout has channels on top and DMs on bottom, but you can put them anywhere. And that kind of thing is my run with Slack. It has answers for many UX complaints, but they are buried in settings somewhere or behind a paywall.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  If your company does this, you just have to give up on clearing the notification badge. You'd have to click on each individual "team" and then hover over each team's new message long enough that Teams is convinced you've read it. There might be a "mark all as read" button somewhere but Microsoft certainly doesn't make it easy to find.

alkonaut 6y ago

> She glanced at Slack and pointed to the list of users. While I also hate the team UX, at least to me it looks pretty similar to Slack in the standard view. On my left when I start up is a list of all users. If I click one I have an IM session with that user. There are some other "views" in Teams (Teams view, Activities view, ...) were you in one of those?