6 ms·

Microsoft agrees to stop bundling Teams with Office

68 points by tim_sw 3y ago

tim_sw 3y ago
https://archive.ph/VYpFZ https://archive.ph/VYpFZ
ano-ther 3y ago
I’ve rarely seen Teams used as a group chat like Slack. Rather: - Calls, online meetings, DMs - An easy way to set up and manage shared folders in SharePoint - this makes my life so much easier because everyone in my company knows how not to rely on attachments any longer. While I get Slack’s perspective, they and Teams serve different needs in my opinion.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Where I work, Teams is all that we're allowed to use. This has dramatically reduced the amount of communication taking place overall, and has increased the use of email (emails will get answered eventually, Teams chats might not). We also don't use SharePoint much, although I consider that a good thing, personally.
  - mcswell 3y ago
    Likewise here. IMO, Teams is a good place for information to go to die. I can file emails that I may want to refer to in my own filing system, and in some cases I've gone back to emails I filed ten years ago to discover the answer to some company question. With Teams, I can find on Monday posts that were sent on Friday. They're probably still there, I just can't find them. Similarly for files that are stored on Teams/Sharepoint; it's hard to create a useable link (at least there's no obvious way to do it), and everyone is forced to use one person's directory structure, which as often as not doesn't make any sense to the rest of us. What's the right way to store files? Store a single copy in some database-like structure, and let me create my personal "directory structure" to point to it. Then I can find it, and if anyone else uses their own personal directory structure, they can find it too. This could be a Linux file system where I'm allowed to create simlinks, but not copy a file, or it could be my Outlook folder structure. (I'm assuming that when Outlook sends an email to multiple recipients on the same email server, there's really only one copy of the email, and everyone has links to it, at least until they reply to it.)
  - alexjplant 3y ago
    The only place I've ever worked that used Teams treated it as a replacement for Lync/Skype for Business. We just DM'd each other sporadically and nothing really got posted in public channels. Everything was also set to auto-delete after 60 days so it couldn't be searched as a long-term knowledge repository (why this was done is left as an exercise to the reader). Teams as an app is generally mediocre but my company's implementation was garbage; Slack is an order of magnitude better in every respect.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  Same here. We have some activity in the actual teams (channels), but most of it is like you say, DM's, calls and meetings. We use the SharePoint integration to make it easy for support to find files and documentation. I've actually been trying to push more of it into the teams (channels), but the giant group chat is persistent... I think most regular folks just aren't aligned with the concept of chat channels.
- Pephers 3y ago
  On a previous job we underwent a migration from Lynq/Skype for Business/email to Slack. It was driven by us employees and channels were very active and people engaged. We had dev teams in four different countries and I believe the communication on Slack was a key ingredient to our success. Years later upper management must have noticed the Slack line item in the sheets and the company migrated to Teams which was of course included in the Office 365 plan. Public channels become almost silent in comparison and we reverted to DM'ing/emails.
- pxc 3y ago
  > I’ve rarely seen Teams used as a group chat like Slack This is because Teams is just not very good to use for group chats. Most companies that use Teams don't have anything like Slack, and so they just don't have big group chats of that kind.
tech234a 3y ago
I wonder if this just means that Microsoft will provide separate, alternate installers for Office without Teams on a hidden section of its website.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lockhouse 3y ago
Isn't Teams built into Windows 11?
- ehPReth 3y ago
  Indeed -- the W11 one is "consumer teams" and not "business teams" I think. Kinda of like how there was Skype and ..Skype for Business? I can't access the FT article though so not quite sure which "Teams" we're talking about @_@
  - tanseydavid 3y ago
    These sorts of "bifurcations" are maddening.
    - lockhouse 3y ago
      Trust me, Microsoft can do worse... Windows 7 had the following "main" editions: Windows 7 Starter Windows 7 Home Basic Windows 7 Home Premium Windows 7 Professional Windows 7 Enterprise Windows 7 Ultimate Plus a few more "special" editions that removed certain programs to comply with antitrust regulations in the EU and other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions
whatever1 3y ago
Now that slack was extinguished sure we can unbundle. Teams just proved that having a subpar product[1] does not matter as long as you have hostage customers. 1. Ok teams was not just subpar it was the worst teleconference app I used, worse even than Skype that Microsoft also makes.
- nichos 3y ago
  Slack was distinguished? When? You might be looking at your circle, but it's alive and well.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    It does seem like a very odd comment to make. Slack going out of business or being on the precipice of shutting down would have been huge news.
  - whatever1 3y ago
    Slack in 2018 had more daily active users than teams. Now teams has roughly 6X the active users of Slack (180M vs 30M), with Slack having a flat trend while teams is still growing. Aka Slack is now a niche player, not a serious competitor for Teams.
quyleanh 3y ago
Besides the performance problem, I’m happy to use Teams daily since it’s integrated directly with Office 365 apps. Easy to open, share, manage, note, meeting…
- isanjay 3y ago
  May you have a powerful machine? I have Intel i7 U series 16GB RAM work laptop it's very slow :(
  - quyleanh 3y ago
    I do have problem with performance. Btw, I'm using ThinkPad X13 Gen 2i now, with 8GB RAM only.
- 6uhrmittag 3y ago
  They already have a newly written Teams App in preview that should solve the performance issues: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/introducing-the-new-microsoft-teams-now-in-preview/ba-p/3774406 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...
  - isanjay 3y ago
    I have access to it and it is just marginally better performance wise and lot buggy. I doubt the performance will improve in GA. I guess JavaScript is the problem.
amai 3y ago
Too little, too late. Microsoft needs to be split up into an OS company, an office company, a games company, a cloud company, ... . The MS monopoly is preventing progress in many fields.
- MrOwnPut 3y ago
  > The MS monopoly is preventing progress in many fields. I fail to see this. Could you provide examples and reasonings? At least in the developer community they've provided many tools that facilitate a lot of progress. - TypeScript (huge boost for the JS community) - VSCode (massive contribution for all developers) - Monaco (allows any website/app to provide a quality code editor) - LSP (allows other code editors to compete with VSCode) - Playwright (got rid of the puppeteer Chrome-only browser testing lock-in) - WSL (I mean... Linux support, nuff said.) - RNW (boosts react native, helping break down the app walled garden development, no need for Swift/Kotlin/whatever) I'm sure there's a lot more I missed.
  - snoopen 3y ago
    Word Processors for one, and possibly the whole Office suite. There have been no significant updates to sore points in Word such as: bullets and numbering that are convoluted to create and can completely corrupt; VBA IDE is probably unchanged since the 90s and the language itself has had little to no improvements. Office 365 has only made things worse: collaboration features will randomly drop your formatting; auto-save can disable itself in some conditions; even with auto-save on, there can be significant lag between collaborators. PowerPoint, years ago, lost the ability to record macros... it's still missing even though you can write macros and run them. Don't even get me started on how much of a joke their "OpenXML" format is. There's been so much potential in the Office suite that's been squandered by MS focusing on adding half baked features rather than making a truly solid product.
  - snoopen 3y ago
    WSL was essential to keeping people using Windows which they then use to railroad you with dark patterns into using their Cloud services and browser. On first install and every significant update they make it very difficult to not use their cloud services. With Edge they don't let you turn off the spammy trashy ads on the new tab page unless you're a pro user or corporation or something. Anything MS does that seems nice like TypeScript, C#, VSCode etc is the exception not the rule.

68 points by tim_sw 3y ago

https://archive.ph/VYpFZ https://archive.ph/VYpFZ

I’ve rarely seen Teams used as a group chat like Slack. Rather: - Calls, online meetings, DMs - An easy way to set up and manage shared folders in SharePoint - this makes my life so much easier because everyone in my company knows how not to rely on attachments any longer. While I get Slack’s perspective, they and Teams serve different needs in my opinion.

JohnFen 3y ago
Where I work, Teams is all that we're allowed to use. This has dramatically reduced the amount of communication taking place overall, and has increased the use of email (emails will get answered eventually, Teams chats might not). We also don't use SharePoint much, although I consider that a good thing, personally.
- mcswell 3y ago
  Likewise here. IMO, Teams is a good place for information to go to die. I can file emails that I may want to refer to in my own filing system, and in some cases I've gone back to emails I filed ten years ago to discover the answer to some company question. With Teams, I can find on Monday posts that were sent on Friday. They're probably still there, I just can't find them. Similarly for files that are stored on Teams/Sharepoint; it's hard to create a useable link (at least there's no obvious way to do it), and everyone is forced to use one person's directory structure, which as often as not doesn't make any sense to the rest of us. What's the right way to store files? Store a single copy in some database-like structure, and let me create my personal "directory structure" to point to it. Then I can find it, and if anyone else uses their own personal directory structure, they can find it too. This could be a Linux file system where I'm allowed to create simlinks, but not copy a file, or it could be my Outlook folder structure. (I'm assuming that when Outlook sends an email to multiple recipients on the same email server, there's really only one copy of the email, and everyone has links to it, at least until they reply to it.)
- alexjplant 3y ago
  The only place I've ever worked that used Teams treated it as a replacement for Lync/Skype for Business. We just DM'd each other sporadically and nothing really got posted in public channels. Everything was also set to auto-delete after 60 days so it couldn't be searched as a long-term knowledge repository (why this was done is left as an exercise to the reader). Teams as an app is generally mediocre but my company's implementation was garbage; Slack is an order of magnitude better in every respect.
magicalhippo 3y ago
Same here. We have some activity in the actual teams (channels), but most of it is like you say, DM's, calls and meetings. We use the SharePoint integration to make it easy for support to find files and documentation. I've actually been trying to push more of it into the teams (channels), but the giant group chat is persistent... I think most regular folks just aren't aligned with the concept of chat channels.
Pephers 3y ago
On a previous job we underwent a migration from Lynq/Skype for Business/email to Slack. It was driven by us employees and channels were very active and people engaged. We had dev teams in four different countries and I believe the communication on Slack was a key ingredient to our success. Years later upper management must have noticed the Slack line item in the sheets and the company migrated to Teams which was of course included in the Office 365 plan. Public channels become almost silent in comparison and we reverted to DM'ing/emails.
pxc 3y ago
> I’ve rarely seen Teams used as a group chat like Slack This is because Teams is just not very good to use for group chats. Most companies that use Teams don't have anything like Slack, and so they just don't have big group chats of that kind.

tech234a 3y ago

I wonder if this just means that Microsoft will provide separate, alternate installers for Office without Teams on a hidden section of its website.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

lockhouse 3y ago

Isn't Teams built into Windows 11?

ehPReth 3y ago
Indeed -- the W11 one is "consumer teams" and not "business teams" I think. Kinda of like how there was Skype and ..Skype for Business? I can't access the FT article though so not quite sure which "Teams" we're talking about @_@
- tanseydavid 3y ago
  These sorts of "bifurcations" are maddening.
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    Trust me, Microsoft can do worse... Windows 7 had the following "main" editions: Windows 7 Starter Windows 7 Home Basic Windows 7 Home Premium Windows 7 Professional Windows 7 Enterprise Windows 7 Ultimate Plus a few more "special" editions that removed certain programs to comply with antitrust regulations in the EU and other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

whatever1 3y ago

Now that slack was extinguished sure we can unbundle. Teams just proved that having a subpar product[1] does not matter as long as you have hostage customers. 1. Ok teams was not just subpar it was the worst teleconference app I used, worse even than Skype that Microsoft also makes.

nichos 3y ago
Slack was distinguished? When? You might be looking at your circle, but it's alive and well.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  It does seem like a very odd comment to make. Slack going out of business or being on the precipice of shutting down would have been huge news.
- whatever1 3y ago
  Slack in 2018 had more daily active users than teams. Now teams has roughly 6X the active users of Slack (180M vs 30M), with Slack having a flat trend while teams is still growing. Aka Slack is now a niche player, not a serious competitor for Teams.

quyleanh 3y ago

Besides the performance problem, I’m happy to use Teams daily since it’s integrated directly with Office 365 apps. Easy to open, share, manage, note, meeting…

isanjay 3y ago
May you have a powerful machine? I have Intel i7 U series 16GB RAM work laptop it's very slow :(
- quyleanh 3y ago
  I do have problem with performance. Btw, I'm using ThinkPad X13 Gen 2i now, with 8GB RAM only.
6uhrmittag 3y ago
They already have a newly written Teams App in preview that should solve the performance issues: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/introducing-the-new-microsoft-teams-now-in-preview/ba-p/3774406 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/...
- isanjay 3y ago
  I have access to it and it is just marginally better performance wise and lot buggy. I doubt the performance will improve in GA. I guess JavaScript is the problem.

amai 3y ago

Too little, too late. Microsoft needs to be split up into an OS company, an office company, a games company, a cloud company, ... . The MS monopoly is preventing progress in many fields.

MrOwnPut 3y ago
> The MS monopoly is preventing progress in many fields. I fail to see this. Could you provide examples and reasonings? At least in the developer community they've provided many tools that facilitate a lot of progress. - TypeScript (huge boost for the JS community) - VSCode (massive contribution for all developers) - Monaco (allows any website/app to provide a quality code editor) - LSP (allows other code editors to compete with VSCode) - Playwright (got rid of the puppeteer Chrome-only browser testing lock-in) - WSL (I mean... Linux support, nuff said.) - RNW (boosts react native, helping break down the app walled garden development, no need for Swift/Kotlin/whatever) I'm sure there's a lot more I missed.
- snoopen 3y ago
  Word Processors for one, and possibly the whole Office suite. There have been no significant updates to sore points in Word such as: bullets and numbering that are convoluted to create and can completely corrupt; VBA IDE is probably unchanged since the 90s and the language itself has had little to no improvements. Office 365 has only made things worse: collaboration features will randomly drop your formatting; auto-save can disable itself in some conditions; even with auto-save on, there can be significant lag between collaborators. PowerPoint, years ago, lost the ability to record macros... it's still missing even though you can write macros and run them. Don't even get me started on how much of a joke their "OpenXML" format is. There's been so much potential in the Office suite that's been squandered by MS focusing on adding half baked features rather than making a truly solid product.
- snoopen 3y ago
  WSL was essential to keeping people using Windows which they then use to railroad you with dark patterns into using their Cloud services and browser. On first install and every significant update they make it very difficult to not use their cloud services. With Edge they don't let you turn off the spammy trashy ads on the new tab page unless you're a pro user or corporation or something. Anything MS does that seems nice like TypeScript, C#, VSCode etc is the exception not the rule.