4 ms·

Yea, but it works cross platform and on mobile. With the ability to carry voice connections from one to the other. Or even switch from wifi to mobile data witho

Yea, but it works cross platform and on mobile. With the ability to carry voice connections from one to the other. Or even switch from wifi to mobile data without dropping. Even view people sharing their screen from mobile. For large teams and businesses I haven’t used anything better yet and we’ve gone through a lot over the years. Also Teams has met some strict Infosec reqs we need for mobile.

laumars 5y ago
I cannot comment on the switching between WiFi and data aspect because I’ve not tried that myself (though it didn’t work on my MBP switching between Ethernet and WiFi) but everything else you’ve described is pretty standard features for video conferencing solutions these days. I’d like Teams more if it just focused on the video conferencing side of things. It’s chat and Sharepoint integration just adds more frustration than anything.
- trixie_ 5y ago
  Seamlessly going from a chat about a problem, to a video meeting, to screen sharing, to sharing files, and then continuing the conversation on mobile, to scheduling a teams meeting later in the week to follow up and fully integrated into outlook is what I’m talking about.
  - laumars 5y ago
    Which is fine if your chat UI doesn’t totally suck for 99.9% of the other use cases. I’d readily take the additional pain of switching applications if it means I don’t have to deal with Teams for chat. Also all video conferencing and chat applications support sharing files. This isn’t some unheard of feature that Microsoft have pioneered. It’s been possible since the BBS days. It’s possible in XMPP and IRC. It’s possible in every other commercial service I’ve used. And I happen to think Teams does it the worst out of everyone of them because of the weird UI decisions and Sharepoint integration. Compare Slack to Teams and you see what I mean. Files are in lined in Slack and it’s easy to preview and work with them. It’s a pain in the arse in Teams. Slack also has all the other features of Teams that you’re boasting about. And Slack isn’t even perfect itself yet it still runs circulars around Teams in terms of usability. Literally the only thing Teams gets right is the way of marking the confidentiality of shared content. But that doesn’t justify the mess Microsoft have made of Teams UI. I’m not one of these FOSS evangelists who throws their toys out of the pram if we don’t use IRC. But Teams UI is really just a clusterfuck of bad design decisions. It’s easily the worst designed solution out there. Except maybe WebEx - which is a pretty fucking low bar, scraping the barrel really. Microsoft know they automatically win the enterprise because of AD and Office integration. So they don’t need to compete on quality. They just need to be present.
    - trixie_ 5y ago
      You’re complaining a lot about the UI which is perfectly usable. The mobile app is especially nice. I can carry a meeting from my phone to my desktop without skipping a beat. They are constantly adding features and polishing, but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat. Yes the app is relatively new compared to slack but improving quickly, for example the last update - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-december-2021/ba-p/3050099 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...
      - laumars 5y ago
        “Usable” isn’t acceptable when every other solution is intuitive. I don’t just want something “usable”, after 30 years of research in GUI design I expect something better than just usable from one of the largest software developers in the world. And this is why myself and others keep saying Teams is garbage. Why settle for something that is only just barely usable when there are a dozen other solutions on the market that are highly intuitive. I’ve lost count of the number of textual messages I’ve missed in Teams because of the appalling way groups are handled. Or the number of lost conversations because video chat conversations are blended into private 1:1 chats. It’s a fucking mess of an interface. Literally everyone else does it better. > The mobile app is especially nice. I couldn’t give a crap about how nice the mobile app is when 99.99% of the time I’m chatting and running meetings from my laptop. I want MS to produce a 1st class productivity tool, not TikTok. > They are constantly adding features I don’t want new features. As I mentioned at the start, Teams already has too many features. I just want the core user experience not to suck. > but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat Yet text chat between people sucks and I (like 99% of Teams user base) spend more time messaging people than we do in video conferences for 500+ people. Your shilling here really does demonstrate just how much Microsoft have swung and missed imo. Both you and Microsoft have completely lost touch with the kind of usage that most people actually need Teams to be good at. I mean yeah, some of the features you’ve described are handy in niche situations but if the average use case is appealing (and it really is in Teams) then you find yourself lusting after other solutions most of the time. Case in point: At my company I literally pay for Slack despite also having Teams around just because Teams sucks so badly for anything non-video. I guess we could use IRC for free but Slack has better support for in lining files (better than Teams too), better support for Markdown (better than teams too), better search in chats than Teams, better ways of organising conversations. And it’s a thousand times easier to read conversations too. It’s just better in every way for messaging. And with huddle support, it’s also not better than Teams for quick voice chats too. And if I had to drop Slack then I’d switch to Discord, IRC, XMPP or literal anything before being stuck with Teams for all our non-video communication.

laumars 5y ago

I cannot comment on the switching between WiFi and data aspect because I’ve not tried that myself (though it didn’t work on my MBP switching between Ethernet and WiFi) but everything else you’ve described is pretty standard features for video conferencing solutions these days. I’d like Teams more if it just focused on the video conferencing side of things. It’s chat and Sharepoint integration just adds more frustration than anything.

trixie_ 5y ago
Seamlessly going from a chat about a problem, to a video meeting, to screen sharing, to sharing files, and then continuing the conversation on mobile, to scheduling a teams meeting later in the week to follow up and fully integrated into outlook is what I’m talking about.
- laumars 5y ago
  Which is fine if your chat UI doesn’t totally suck for 99.9% of the other use cases. I’d readily take the additional pain of switching applications if it means I don’t have to deal with Teams for chat. Also all video conferencing and chat applications support sharing files. This isn’t some unheard of feature that Microsoft have pioneered. It’s been possible since the BBS days. It’s possible in XMPP and IRC. It’s possible in every other commercial service I’ve used. And I happen to think Teams does it the worst out of everyone of them because of the weird UI decisions and Sharepoint integration. Compare Slack to Teams and you see what I mean. Files are in lined in Slack and it’s easy to preview and work with them. It’s a pain in the arse in Teams. Slack also has all the other features of Teams that you’re boasting about. And Slack isn’t even perfect itself yet it still runs circulars around Teams in terms of usability. Literally the only thing Teams gets right is the way of marking the confidentiality of shared content. But that doesn’t justify the mess Microsoft have made of Teams UI. I’m not one of these FOSS evangelists who throws their toys out of the pram if we don’t use IRC. But Teams UI is really just a clusterfuck of bad design decisions. It’s easily the worst designed solution out there. Except maybe WebEx - which is a pretty fucking low bar, scraping the barrel really. Microsoft know they automatically win the enterprise because of AD and Office integration. So they don’t need to compete on quality. They just need to be present.
  - trixie_ 5y ago
    You’re complaining a lot about the UI which is perfectly usable. The mobile app is especially nice. I can carry a meeting from my phone to my desktop without skipping a beat. They are constantly adding features and polishing, but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat. Yes the app is relatively new compared to slack but improving quickly, for example the last update - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-december-2021/ba-p/3050099 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...
    - laumars 5y ago
      “Usable” isn’t acceptable when every other solution is intuitive. I don’t just want something “usable”, after 30 years of research in GUI design I expect something better than just usable from one of the largest software developers in the world. And this is why myself and others keep saying Teams is garbage. Why settle for something that is only just barely usable when there are a dozen other solutions on the market that are highly intuitive. I’ve lost count of the number of textual messages I’ve missed in Teams because of the appalling way groups are handled. Or the number of lost conversations because video chat conversations are blended into private 1:1 chats. It’s a fucking mess of an interface. Literally everyone else does it better. > The mobile app is especially nice. I couldn’t give a crap about how nice the mobile app is when 99.99% of the time I’m chatting and running meetings from my laptop. I want MS to produce a 1st class productivity tool, not TikTok. > They are constantly adding features I don’t want new features. As I mentioned at the start, Teams already has too many features. I just want the core user experience not to suck. > but already meetings with hundreds of people it handles no sweat Yet text chat between people sucks and I (like 99% of Teams user base) spend more time messaging people than we do in video conferences for 500+ people. Your shilling here really does demonstrate just how much Microsoft have swung and missed imo. Both you and Microsoft have completely lost touch with the kind of usage that most people actually need Teams to be good at. I mean yeah, some of the features you’ve described are handy in niche situations but if the average use case is appealing (and it really is in Teams) then you find yourself lusting after other solutions most of the time. Case in point: At my company I literally pay for Slack despite also having Teams around just because Teams sucks so badly for anything non-video. I guess we could use IRC for free but Slack has better support for in lining files (better than Teams too), better support for Markdown (better than teams too), better search in chats than Teams, better ways of organising conversations. And it’s a thousand times easier to read conversations too. It’s just better in every way for messaging. And with huddle support, it’s also not better than Teams for quick voice chats too. And if I had to drop Slack then I’d switch to Discord, IRC, XMPP or literal anything before being stuck with Teams for all our non-video communication.