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My company is transitioning to Teams and I find it frustrating. So much so that I collect my complaints in a confluence page. I could be wrong on some of thes

by jrib 4y ago

My company is transitioning to Teams and I find it frustrating. So much so that I collect my complaints in a confluence page. I could be wrong on some of these, so happy to be corrected! No links You can’t link to conversations. This means if you want to add context to a Jira ticket or in a code comment, you can’t easily do so. Inconsistent UI The UI between a Teams channel and a chat with multiple people is not consistent. Direct chats: - do not have the ability to thread; so you end up with quotes all over the place and interleaved conversations. - don’t support ``` for code blocks. Channel chats do. Why? I have no clue. Notifications in channels are easy to miss It’s really easy to miss notifications from channels unless you get messaged directly about it. The emojis are bad They aren’t customizable, but even the ones that are available are not great. Compared to Slack Teams lacks these features that I find useful in Slack: - Don’t have time to address something immediately and don’t want to forget about it? Right click → Remind me later. - Instead of struggling to communicate a screen location, draw on the screen when a co-worker is sharing their display. Ok, Teams introduced this recently. But the first time I tried it, I ended up stuck in annotation mode and had to quit Teams to be able to interact with my applications… - Integration with Jira for automatic linking to mentioned issues by Jira Issue Key, e.g., PROJ-123. I think this one is just a limitation because my company hasn't added the integration. - Notifications when when activity occurs in Bitbucket or Jira. Ditto. The hold music sucks The music played when alone on a call sucks. I suppose this is more subjective than the rest…

metaltyphoon 4y ago
Doesn’t matter… teams is free with an office 365 subscription and slack is not, therefore lots of companies will prefer it.
- jrib 4y ago
  Agreed. Especially with slack raising prices, I understand the business decision.
  - winrid 4y ago
    Not if people quit because talking to each other is made to be a terrible experience.
llama052 4y ago
How hard is it to get codeblocks working instead of them focusing on every use case on the planet. It's so damn terrible.
- TideAd 4y ago
  Always a 50/50 shot whether typing three tick marks ``` will do what I want, or do nothing.
  - llama052 4y ago
    Yeah it never works for me on the mac osx desktop client. Even the regular quote tickets don't work.
- tryauuum 4y ago
  Backticks suck, but you can insert code block with syntax highlighting from menu
  - llama052 4y ago
    Yeah nothing better than clicking through 2 different nested menus to insert code.
jlarocco 4y ago
Those are just missing features, though! My favorite Teams bug is when the arrow keys stop working for text navigation. They had to go out of the way to break something like that.
- hestefisk 4y ago
  There’s also a bug where it will suddenly reverse text direction from left right to right left. It’s very strange.
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    I started Teams the other day and the whole screen was upside down as if I’d rotated my surface. Just Teams - every other application was fine.
vinhant 4y ago
Regarding code block, try ```<space> (backtick 3 times then space)
- jrib 4y ago
  Thanks, adding the <space> in chats does work!
- cmiles74 4y ago
  It's easy to forget as literally no other application works this way.
- LinAGKar 4y ago
  If Teams could just get real markdown support, instead of shoddily replacing it with WYSIWYG
  - vel0city 4y ago
    I imagine the majority of their user base prefers WYSIWYG over Markdown. They're not trying to target mostly developers.
Noumenon72 4y ago
One more: No keyboard shortcut for Back, on the Mac at least. And most of the other shortcuts only work in a meeting.
LinAGKar 4y ago
>- don’t support ``` for code blocks. Channel chats do. Why? I have no clue. In general, Teams doesn't have real markdown support. It can detect some markdown-ish syntax and replace it with its WYSIWYG stuff, but that's not the same thing (it doesn't always replace it, it doesn't handle messages sent with markdown syntax properly, it doesn't follow standard markdown syntax, and it doesn't let you edit the markdown markup). Other issues I've had: - Teams for desktop likes to randomly decide your microphone isn't working, and turn your audio off. The microphone works fine in literally any other program. - Trying to close the window doesn't close it, it just minimizes it and hides it from the taskbar. It plays the minimize animation, it still shows up in alt-tab, and it stays on the same virtual desktop when reopening the window, rather than reopening on the current desktop. - It always throws its window up when starting. There seems to be no way to make it start in the background. -There is no way to choose spellchecker language, it's hardcoded to use the same language as the UI.
- tumetab1 4y ago
  > - Teams for desktop likes to randomly decide your microphone isn't working, and turn your audio off. The microphone works fine in literally any other program. If you're using a Mac this might be a MacOS feature/bug which you might already worked around it in another applications https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253371535 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253371535
  - LinAGKar 4y ago
    No, I'm on Linux
    - trelane 4y ago
      Don't you know that you're supposed to run Linux in WSL, and use teams outside the VM, in Windows? ;)
mnkypete 4y ago
> No links > You can’t link to conversations. This means if you want to add context to a Jira ticket or in a code comment, you can’t easily do so. You can, at least technically, if you know the message IDs (search for Teams deep links).. Not sure why they don't expose this on the UI though.. Shameless plug: If you are looking for linking conversation to Jira, try our app: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220851/microsoft-teams-for-jira-jsm-smart-connect?hosting=cloud&tab=overview https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220851/microsoft-tea...

by jrib 4y ago

metaltyphoon 4y ago

Doesn’t matter… teams is free with an office 365 subscription and slack is not, therefore lots of companies will prefer it.

jrib 4y ago
Agreed. Especially with slack raising prices, I understand the business decision.
- winrid 4y ago
  Not if people quit because talking to each other is made to be a terrible experience.

llama052 4y ago

How hard is it to get codeblocks working instead of them focusing on every use case on the planet. It's so damn terrible.

TideAd 4y ago
Always a 50/50 shot whether typing three tick marks ``` will do what I want, or do nothing.
- llama052 4y ago
  Yeah it never works for me on the mac osx desktop client. Even the regular quote tickets don't work.
tryauuum 4y ago
Backticks suck, but you can insert code block with syntax highlighting from menu
- llama052 4y ago
  Yeah nothing better than clicking through 2 different nested menus to insert code.

jlarocco 4y ago

Those are just missing features, though! My favorite Teams bug is when the arrow keys stop working for text navigation. They had to go out of the way to break something like that.

hestefisk 4y ago
There’s also a bug where it will suddenly reverse text direction from left right to right left. It’s very strange.
- mr_toad 4y ago
  I started Teams the other day and the whole screen was upside down as if I’d rotated my surface. Just Teams - every other application was fine.

vinhant 4y ago

Regarding code block, try ```<space> (backtick 3 times then space)

jrib 4y ago
Thanks, adding the <space> in chats does work!
cmiles74 4y ago
It's easy to forget as literally no other application works this way.
LinAGKar 4y ago
If Teams could just get real markdown support, instead of shoddily replacing it with WYSIWYG
- vel0city 4y ago
  I imagine the majority of their user base prefers WYSIWYG over Markdown. They're not trying to target mostly developers.

Noumenon72 4y ago

One more: No keyboard shortcut for Back, on the Mac at least. And most of the other shortcuts only work in a meeting.

LinAGKar 4y ago

>- don’t support ``` for code blocks. Channel chats do. Why? I have no clue. In general, Teams doesn't have real markdown support. It can detect some markdown-ish syntax and replace it with its WYSIWYG stuff, but that's not the same thing (it doesn't always replace it, it doesn't handle messages sent with markdown syntax properly, it doesn't follow standard markdown syntax, and it doesn't let you edit the markdown markup). Other issues I've had: - Teams for desktop likes to randomly decide your microphone isn't working, and turn your audio off. The microphone works fine in literally any other program. - Trying to close the window doesn't close it, it just minimizes it and hides it from the taskbar. It plays the minimize animation, it still shows up in alt-tab, and it stays on the same virtual desktop when reopening the window, rather than reopening on the current desktop. - It always throws its window up when starting. There seems to be no way to make it start in the background. -There is no way to choose spellchecker language, it's hardcoded to use the same language as the UI.

tumetab1 4y ago
> - Teams for desktop likes to randomly decide your microphone isn't working, and turn your audio off. The microphone works fine in literally any other program. If you're using a Mac this might be a MacOS feature/bug which you might already worked around it in another applications https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253371535 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253371535
- LinAGKar 4y ago
  No, I'm on Linux
  - trelane 4y ago
    Don't you know that you're supposed to run Linux in WSL, and use teams outside the VM, in Windows? ;)

mnkypete 4y ago

> No links > You can’t link to conversations. This means if you want to add context to a Jira ticket or in a code comment, you can’t easily do so. You can, at least technically, if you know the message IDs (search for Teams deep links).. Not sure why they don't expose this on the UI though.. Shameless plug: If you are looking for linking conversation to Jira, try our app: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220851/microsoft-teams-for-jira-jsm-smart-connect?hosting=cloud&tab=overview https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220851/microsoft-tea...