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by JohnFen 2302 days ago
> Because we've tried Teams?

That scans. I hate chat apps, personally, but we are required to use Teams at my workplace. Teams is truly horrendous. I would strongly prefer that we used Slack.

1 comments

Microsoft Teams really is horrendous.

I've used a lot of chat apps over decades. Teams might be the first one that manages to be _confusing_ - a feat I'd never seen in a chat app - because of the way it rearranges new threads, yet hides the recent part of the thread. Plus various other half-implemented features. The wiki and sharepoint/file integration doesn't work very well. There's no wiki search. It's super easy to delete an entire wiki. I've lost notifications on entire channels for > 1 month without realizing it. Just a ton of little stuff like that; my team will never go back.

Slack is "fine" - it mostly works, and has a lot of app integrations.

It boggles my mind how Teams can be this terrible.

How?? How did they fuck it up this badly?

It's the only program I've ever used ever where I have difficulty finding the options menu. I still have trouble finding it. Like it's not something I figure out once and I'm like, "huh, that's weird" and then I know where it is. I have to relearn where it is every time, clicking and right clicking on random UI elements until the menu bar pops up.

Why can't I turn off the highlights for "random user 10000 has joined the channel"? I don't fucking care.

Why is the notification configuration so confusing? What the shit is a "banner"? What is a "feed"? Why is it that I don't know what half of the events even mean?

I don't understand how everything about it can be so bad.

Worst is the new thread vs reply are confusing... I like in Android that the new thread is a separate floating button to the bottom/right... they should use that UX for their web/desktop interface.

There are a few things I do like better with teams. I haven't used slack much since before it had its' own voice conf/chat, used to use the hangouts integration for that.

In the end, there's parts about them all that suck... I think the biggest mistake with Teams is actually using wiki and files in more than the main channel on very few team groups. Also, creating more team groups is a big issue. I see the same happen with slack, but it's less intrusive.

With slack, I hate that multi-org logins are a pain, if you're in multiple communities.

Teams is ok, it's just too much functionality. I have problem finding the correct chat room for the voice call right away, I always have to double check if I am in the correct chat.
My problem with Teams really boils down to the absolutely terrible desktop user interface. It's fiddly, hard to work with, and hard to figure out how to do a lot of things. You can't make the window smaller than a certain (way too large) size, and you can't have more than one window. It's just painful, intrusive, and unpleasant.