We used to use it before switching to Google Workspace (don’t get me started on how much I hate that), and Teams wasn’t too bad. But it had two things going for it then:
It was replacing Skype for Business which never should existed because it was so awful. Compared to SfB, literally anything was an improvement.
At the time, it was basically a Slack clone that didn’t have everything and the kitchen sink bolted on yet and was decently lightweight if you used the browser version.
I’m still convinced the turning point was when Microsoft deprecated Skype for Business and merged the devs from that team with the ones working on Teams. My tinfoil hat theory is they brought their garbage Lync code with them and pulled seniority to somehow jam it into the new codebase.
Maybe I’m remembering early/beta Teams with rose tinted spectacles, but at the very least the silver lining was that I no longer needed to keep a separate Windows machine running just for work IM.
I even tried adding it to Citrix, but it refused to install on a server version of Windows.
I do not believe anyone at Microsoft actually uses it because if they did there’s no way in hell that they would have let it be that bad.
It literally keeps every single conversation you’ve ever had in a big long list on the left, with absolutely no way to organize it, categorize it, order it, or in any way manage it other than deleting history, that’s it you can delete history.
Microsoft’s design philosophy in any of their products has gone from well organized menus to relying instead on a search bar. Copilot is a further addition to that design, with yet more pushes to never use a menu, but instead just tell it what you want and have it spit it back out. They want everything you make to go on OneDrive as well, so it can also be indexed this way. Teams works the same way. The big search bar at the top is unavoidable.
Windows search is complete garbage, which you might think is a counterpoint, but instead it’s just that they only put work into having it serve results for cloud-indexed items or web results.
There’s a program called “Everything” which is basically just a functional version of Windows search. It’s one of those programs that really should be integrated into the OS but isn’t. The other one being Fences.
It literally keeps every single conversation you’ve ever had in a big long list on the left,
Not all of them, actually. I regularly have to use the search function to find chats/groups I haven’t used in a bit. The most organization you can do is the dozen pinned threads they let you have.
I believe they will never allow users to delete entire chats like that because it will cause mass panic for users and managers, particularly. You already have users doing dumb shit like deleting files accidentally. And more than that, you’ll have managers getting upset that users may be doing it on purpose like “omg I never saw that message! 😱 “
Deleting your own stuff is easy and okayed because it’s not an easy process and it involves multiple steps.
I want to be able to label chats. I don’t know who Sammy Gupta is, I know we must have spoken to them at some point but it was 2 years ago and I don’t remember who they are, what their role or responsibility is, or anything about them.
That’s my primary gripe too. I could theoretically work around it if the chat search worked. I’ll try searching for a specific word to see who said it to me and when, but if it was more than a couple days ago I’m out of luck. Later I’ll remember who said it, eventually find them in the sidebar, scroll up 40 pages in the chat, and find the exact word Teams claimed it’s never heard of.
I know someone working there. I was in a few group calls he organised using teams where I used an anonymous login. Then Microsoft forced you to make an account to use it, so I declined after that.
I’ve had nothing but issues with it since their “upgrade” over the last year or so. It keeps cycling between the new and old versions when I open it, it often closes itself on my PC, and every time I try to pin it to my Taskbar it disappears.
I have 3 different computers I use on a daily and each of them encounter this issue multiple times each week. A meeting starts and I have to go start up Teams and wait for it to fully open to join the call. Or I have someone cold call me and I don’t get the call on my computer and won’t even after opening Teams.
They can do a full refresh and release new features to make it look pretty but nothing has been done to address this issue that has been ongoing since day 1 of this “new Teams” refresh.
i hate ms with every fiber of my being, but teams has gotten better. it used to be practically unusable. now its just mostly so
There’s a huge Teams outage right now. I have to use it at work and it makes me want to jump face first into a wood chipper.
Is that regional? Ours is working fine out in the midwest.
Must be.
My company is currently forcibly migrating off of Slack to Teams. It’s so heartbreaking…
You’re in for a world of shit.
We used to use it before switching to Google Workspace (don’t get me started on how much I hate that), and Teams wasn’t too bad. But it had two things going for it then:
I’m still convinced the turning point was when Microsoft deprecated Skype for Business and merged the devs from that team with the ones working on Teams. My tinfoil hat theory is they brought their garbage Lync code with them and pulled seniority to somehow jam it into the new codebase.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire!
To be fair, you are right about SfB. My previous job used that
Maybe I’m remembering early/beta Teams with rose tinted spectacles, but at the very least the silver lining was that I no longer needed to keep a separate Windows machine running just for work IM.
I even tried adding it to Citrix, but it refused to install on a server version of Windows.
I do not believe anyone at Microsoft actually uses it because if they did there’s no way in hell that they would have let it be that bad.
It literally keeps every single conversation you’ve ever had in a big long list on the left, with absolutely no way to organize it, categorize it, order it, or in any way manage it other than deleting history, that’s it you can delete history.
Microsoft’s design philosophy in any of their products has gone from well organized menus to relying instead on a search bar. Copilot is a further addition to that design, with yet more pushes to never use a menu, but instead just tell it what you want and have it spit it back out. They want everything you make to go on OneDrive as well, so it can also be indexed this way. Teams works the same way. The big search bar at the top is unavoidable.
Windows search is complete garbage, which you might think is a counterpoint, but instead it’s just that they only put work into having it serve results for cloud-indexed items or web results.
There’s a program called “Everything” which is basically just a functional version of Windows search. It’s one of those programs that really should be integrated into the OS but isn’t. The other one being Fences.
Everything is lovely. Fences is definitely user preference though. I’m too generally disorganized to make use of it
Not all of them, actually. I regularly have to use the search function to find chats/groups I haven’t used in a bit. The most organization you can do is the dozen pinned threads they let you have.
I believe they will never allow users to delete entire chats like that because it will cause mass panic for users and managers, particularly. You already have users doing dumb shit like deleting files accidentally. And more than that, you’ll have managers getting upset that users may be doing it on purpose like “omg I never saw that message! 😱 “
Deleting your own stuff is easy and okayed because it’s not an easy process and it involves multiple steps.
But you can pin any chat and you can reorder any pinned chat (and maybe even non-pinned ones - I haven’t checked).
But only 15. Yeah, I hit that limit regularly. I just want to out things in folders. That would be a major improvement.
I want to be able to label chats. I don’t know who Sammy Gupta is, I know we must have spoken to them at some point but it was 2 years ago and I don’t remember who they are, what their role or responsibility is, or anything about them.
That’s my primary gripe too. I could theoretically work around it if the chat search worked. I’ll try searching for a specific word to see who said it to me and when, but if it was more than a couple days ago I’m out of luck. Later I’ll remember who said it, eventually find them in the sidebar, scroll up 40 pages in the chat, and find the exact word Teams claimed it’s never heard of.
I know someone working there. I was in a few group calls he organised using teams where I used an anonymous login. Then Microsoft forced you to make an account to use it, so I declined after that.
I’ve had nothing but issues with it since their “upgrade” over the last year or so. It keeps cycling between the new and old versions when I open it, it often closes itself on my PC, and every time I try to pin it to my Taskbar it disappears.
The auto closing is driving me insane.
I have 3 different computers I use on a daily and each of them encounter this issue multiple times each week. A meeting starts and I have to go start up Teams and wait for it to fully open to join the call. Or I have someone cold call me and I don’t get the call on my computer and won’t even after opening Teams.
They can do a full refresh and release new features to make it look pretty but nothing has been done to address this issue that has been ongoing since day 1 of this “new Teams” refresh.
i had this exact issue until i wiped my machine this summer and it refreshed into a full win11 after the crowdstrike debacle
This is a shared workstation PC at my job so I’ll have to just continue to deal with it.