5 ms·

Been using Teams for school for two years now and have zero complaints.

by curiousgal 6y ago

doublerabbit 6y ago
Been using Teams for work for two years and I have so many complaints.
- k12sosse 6y ago
  Great points here.
ehsankia 6y ago
Have you used other software like Discord though to have a frame of reference?
happytoexplain 6y ago
Sometimes you need to be a "power user" to encounter all a product's flaws. I've been using it professionally for 3.5 years, and I touch pretty much every feature. I had high hopes because I loved a lot of the decisions they were making, so I started maintaining a list of issues/bugs. I reported them when I had time to describe them well. After a year, it got into the hundreds, with some that were pretty dramatic, and I stopped caring enough to continue, because it was clearly not going to be the product I was hoping it could be. Since then, the most obvious problem that has happened is slowdown. It takes full seconds to do most navigation/loading in our (large) team. The whole affair made me truly sad, frustrated, and angry.
- tracker1 6y ago
  I think my biggest pet peive is the existence of Files/Wikis per/channel... when most of the time, you kind of one one set per team. Or the proliferation of Team groups themselves. Goes from pretty simple/useful to crazy bloated. Another irksome thing is you can tether the wiki along with files to onedrive via the sharepoint backend links... but the format of the wiki is in a proprietary format, and even if you did get it, it doesn't sync the other way, read only local.
  - k12sosse 6y ago
    Those per channel features are useful for others. Sometimes people don't get to run their own team, but at least they still get all the benefit in their little fiefdom. 6 to 1.. And using the wiki is pointless if you're using OneNote right.
    - tracker1 6y ago
      The wiki is integrated in the box. Unless onenote works in the box.
jbm 6y ago
Been using Teams for 6 months, it's awful. Being asked to log into another Teams instance, for example, results in baffling issues; I had to switch to the web version and that only works sometimes. Turn off a VPN? Be prepared to suddenly, without warning, have a 10-15 minute period where people are messaging you and you don't get any of them. (I am talking about Teams instances that do not depend on you being behind a VPN, more on THOSE after) Video conferences are terrible. I keep getting invites without the Teams URL attached because of UI issues, and worse, there are situations where I can't even access the URL I am given. Low quality Enterprise security teams often ruin Teams installs. For some customers I work with, I am not even able to upload an image to a group chat. (Not a meme mind you; screen shots). "Sure that's the price of a locked down / professional service" you may say, but for some obscene reason, I am able to use Giphy in these chats. And many other miscellaneous issues (degraded experience on Firefox, authentication headaches w/ AD Azure, etc..) As far as I am concerned, this is MSFT's fault since they sold a product that can be configured into complete uselessness for its purpose (sharing information). (Disclaimer: I own MSFT stock and generally like their direction but the execution for this and Azure DevOps is seriously lacking)
PeterisP 6y ago
Try using Teams for school and work with different user accounts - and contrast that with the experience on e.g. Slack where different places managed by different organizations just work.
- tracker1 6y ago
  This is where some of the alternative electron wrappers become useful. I agree that it's pretty bad. Not fun at all when you accidentally join an external chat under your work account.
lifthrasiir 6y ago
My workplace switched from Slack to Teams a year ago and it was a complete disaster. In addition to numerous flaws that would be repeated by others, some users including me couldn't sign in with cooperate accounts at all---every time I put the email address it skips passwords and always ends up with a clueless generic error message with a non-functional "retry" button. I have since found a workaround which requires reinstallation per each launch, because the installer installs an older version that will soon be automatically updated to a newer version, and that older version can retry on the failure with an alternative login prompt that actually works. So Microsoft has at least two login prompts, only one of which is working for me but unsupported by some versions of Teams so that I can barely work around. Brilliant.
- k12sosse 6y ago
  What is your IdP? Do you integrate with Azure AD? Bringing your own provider? Using Microsoft accounts? Does your org use M365 at all? Or are you just using teams out of the suite?
  - lifthrasiir 6y ago
    I don't know the exact provider. I think it's Azure AD with a hybrid identity (since login forms doesn't leave Microsoft at all), but it's a mere guess.
k12sosse 6y ago
As an M365 admin for a district with 65,000 students and 11,000 staff: thank you for saying as much. Teams gets a lot of hate here, but honestly.. it does a lot right. I do admit the Teams client is a bit of a pig. I really wished this deal could have been reached, but then again, competing products will do each other well. Teams is basically Discord for business. It's as if the development team were big fans of Discord. It shows!

Been using Teams for school for two years now and have zero complaints.

doublerabbit 6y ago

Been using Teams for work for two years and I have so many complaints.

k12sosse 6y ago
Great points here.

ehsankia 6y ago

Have you used other software like Discord though to have a frame of reference?

happytoexplain 6y ago

Sometimes you need to be a "power user" to encounter all a product's flaws. I've been using it professionally for 3.5 years, and I touch pretty much every feature. I had high hopes because I loved a lot of the decisions they were making, so I started maintaining a list of issues/bugs. I reported them when I had time to describe them well. After a year, it got into the hundreds, with some that were pretty dramatic, and I stopped caring enough to continue, because it was clearly not going to be the product I was hoping it could be. Since then, the most obvious problem that has happened is slowdown. It takes full seconds to do most navigation/loading in our (large) team. The whole affair made me truly sad, frustrated, and angry.

tracker1 6y ago
I think my biggest pet peive is the existence of Files/Wikis per/channel... when most of the time, you kind of one one set per team. Or the proliferation of Team groups themselves. Goes from pretty simple/useful to crazy bloated. Another irksome thing is you can tether the wiki along with files to onedrive via the sharepoint backend links... but the format of the wiki is in a proprietary format, and even if you did get it, it doesn't sync the other way, read only local.
- k12sosse 6y ago
  Those per channel features are useful for others. Sometimes people don't get to run their own team, but at least they still get all the benefit in their little fiefdom. 6 to 1.. And using the wiki is pointless if you're using OneNote right.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    The wiki is integrated in the box. Unless onenote works in the box.

jbm 6y ago

Been using Teams for 6 months, it's awful. Being asked to log into another Teams instance, for example, results in baffling issues; I had to switch to the web version and that only works sometimes. Turn off a VPN? Be prepared to suddenly, without warning, have a 10-15 minute period where people are messaging you and you don't get any of them. (I am talking about Teams instances that do not depend on you being behind a VPN, more on THOSE after) Video conferences are terrible. I keep getting invites without the Teams URL attached because of UI issues, and worse, there are situations where I can't even access the URL I am given. Low quality Enterprise security teams often ruin Teams installs. For some customers I work with, I am not even able to upload an image to a group chat. (Not a meme mind you; screen shots). "Sure that's the price of a locked down / professional service" you may say, but for some obscene reason, I am able to use Giphy in these chats. And many other miscellaneous issues (degraded experience on Firefox, authentication headaches w/ AD Azure, etc..) As far as I am concerned, this is MSFT's fault since they sold a product that can be configured into complete uselessness for its purpose (sharing information). (Disclaimer: I own MSFT stock and generally like their direction but the execution for this and Azure DevOps is seriously lacking)

PeterisP 6y ago

Try using Teams for school and work with different user accounts - and contrast that with the experience on e.g. Slack where different places managed by different organizations just work.

tracker1 6y ago
This is where some of the alternative electron wrappers become useful. I agree that it's pretty bad. Not fun at all when you accidentally join an external chat under your work account.

lifthrasiir 6y ago

My workplace switched from Slack to Teams a year ago and it was a complete disaster. In addition to numerous flaws that would be repeated by others, some users including me couldn't sign in with cooperate accounts at all---every time I put the email address it skips passwords and always ends up with a clueless generic error message with a non-functional "retry" button. I have since found a workaround which requires reinstallation per each launch, because the installer installs an older version that will soon be automatically updated to a newer version, and that older version can retry on the failure with an alternative login prompt that actually works. So Microsoft has at least two login prompts, only one of which is working for me but unsupported by some versions of Teams so that I can barely work around. Brilliant.

k12sosse 6y ago
What is your IdP? Do you integrate with Azure AD? Bringing your own provider? Using Microsoft accounts? Does your org use M365 at all? Or are you just using teams out of the suite?
- lifthrasiir 6y ago
  I don't know the exact provider. I think it's Azure AD with a hybrid identity (since login forms doesn't leave Microsoft at all), but it's a mere guess.

k12sosse 6y ago

As an M365 admin for a district with 65,000 students and 11,000 staff: thank you for saying as much. Teams gets a lot of hate here, but honestly.. it does a lot right. I do admit the Teams client is a bit of a pig. I really wished this deal could have been reached, but then again, competing products will do each other well. Teams is basically Discord for business. It's as if the development team were big fans of Discord. It shows!