This is gonna sound like a troll post but i assure you it is not.
I don’t have a coding background but I’ve used Teams in a lot of workplaces and really only encountered like 2 issues entirely.
Either I got seriously lucky or it was before enshittification.
Why do you yourself dislike it? Is it UI? Performance?
I should also say I use Teams for basic purposes like messaging and uploading files, I literally don’t touch anything else and performance hadn’t been an issue. (Likely because I’ve been given thicc-ass workstations in the past)
I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.
Lets see, half my team randomly doesent recieve notifications/get notification audio at times. Sometimes youll get a notification that theres a new message in a channel but it doesent show up until you restart teams. Today specifically my mute button was desynced with the application mute and inverted. Sometimes audio devices wont work at all first time you join a meeting until you replug the audio devices (not an os wide issue) the status icon has a mind of its own and will say people are away or completely not available even when they are actively using the computer theres also no way AS ADMINISTRATOR to change how the icon behaves. Only Microsoft is allowed to dictate that. Not nearly enough controls as admin to define visibility in things like timeoff requests, shifts, etc. Instead of having a simple notes tab you have to use some form of OneNote shoved into the software which slows it down, overcomplicates it and sometimes wont even sync changes. Theres more thats just off the top of my head
Compared to skype, irc, slack, xmpp, and any other chat/phone software I’ve used its unreliable spyware.
Spyware in that it’s used to force idle status used by middle managers to make assumptions about when and how you work.
Unreliable in that it stops showing system tray message status when it updates without alert, using vdi/Bluetooth headsets are a crap shoot if audio will work or not, and destroys history by allowing corpo policy to remove messages after X days.
Teams for chat and video is generally OK but when managers start trying to do scheduling, task lists, and kanbans in it it becomes annoying in my experience. A software should have a definitive scope and not try to be an everything tool. If you want that interconnectivity then it’s better to implement a standard which works with another tool that is designed for that purpose instead of tacking on a bunch of shit.
Otherwise, I end up wondering “Ok where the fuck is that scheduled meeting? Was in in outlook? Was it in the teams calendar? Was it in the teams Kanban? Was it a task list item in Teams? Was it in slack? Was it in google calendar? Oh, no, it was in ZOOM! Oh wait, fuck, I actually have a meeting with this client through SKYPE FOR BUSINESS at the same time the zoom meeting starts… Shit.”
Current pet peeve: I’m in a meeting, and I click to switch to another app to check something, then I click the Teams icon to switch back to Teams. Clearly, in this case, I want to get back to the meeting.
Instead, it shows me the calendar view. WTF, Microsoft?
Isn’t the meeting just a different window? Sounds like you have an issue with your windows manager instead.
Yes, it’s a different window.
The issue is that it’s not the first window that Teams selects when I click on it.
Blame it on the macbook if you like, but IMO Teams is at fault.
If that’s program defined behaviour then yes that’s definitely a Teams problem. Stuff like this is why I hate grouped icons though, I just don’t have the issue because I have seperate task bar slots for both windows.
I don’t have this issue in any other apps, so yes, def a Teams thing.
What OS are you using? AFAIK there’s no way to pin the separate Teams windows to the Dock in osx.
That’s on windows, I don’t have teams on my arch install (does it even exist for linux?) but it works with KDE too (at least with other programs).
Kinda sucks that mac OS doesn’t even allow that as an option. Windows started defaulting to grouped icons at some point (probably copying mac) and I’ve always disliked it, but at least you could always disable it (save for some small period at the start of windows 11 that I thankfully never had to use).
Though overall it seems pretty popular, it’s just cases like these where it can get really annoying I suppose.
I hate that it doesn’t have some key features, like the ability to easily annotate on the screen as a viewer. The presenter (host?) must allow it first, which for me often results in frustration as I try to guide them to the top tool bar to find it.
They also don’t have custom emojis like my beloved Slack. And dear god Teams sends you a desktop notification every time someone reacts with an emoji, I disabled that quick.
I also hated how they did groups/channels, also called Teams, a name I hate (why have a feature with the same name as your product?). It was like a shitty forum board, where someone would post a topic and everyone commented underneath it, made it impossible to scroll through. They changed it recently though for a much more user friendly UI.
My favorite Teams feature is that I can mute other participants on a meeting. I can feel the Thrill course through me every time.
Can’t change the main photo for a group, which is a huge oversight to me. Minor league shit.
Honestly it’s never been too bad for me.
except that time it randomly turned on my microphone during a meeting, when I was casually chatting to my brother about the beneficial value of replacing antidepressants with a microdose of shrooms 😬
or when it wants to open docs in Teams instead of opening it in the actual program. It always opens so slow, just so I can close it.
or when it tried to force its update on me, and took me from black background to white, and suddenly the background matched my rage; white hot and seething
Real talk? Because it’s forced on people at work and it’s made by Microsoft. It certainly has its flaws but it’s not the worst software in the world.
My company dropped Slack for Teams, because it’s free with the Office subscription, so I guess they put a price on collaboration and culture. Weeks on none of the bots and integrations work properly because there’s no time to fix shit that was already working.
To me, Microsoft’s entire transition to web technologies is a self inflicted wound. Going native is a massive performance win. They already had that, and went the other way. Just, Why!? Now, Microsoft software is all big, bloated, and slow as fuck. Even the OS. They were literally bragging about a 9 second start up time after some optimizations to Teams. They don’t even know what efficiency is anymore. We all essentially have super computers, now, but sure, congrats on your 9 second load time for a fuckin chat program.
The first time I saw excel open in a web browser, I was impressed that they managed to get it running in a web browser but also appalled that they wanted to get it running in a web browser for actually using it in a web browser instead of just for the novelty, like running doom on anything with a cpu and display.
First thing I do whenever a document opens on the browser version is click the buttons to open it in the native app if I intend to edit it.
They made it shitty to try to justify making it a subscription.
microsoft publisher used to open faster than that on my 1995 pentium, on spinning rust of the time…
Hey, wanna try the New Calendar? Tries the new calendar, it is even worse than the current one. Hey, wanna try the New Calendar? STFU Teams, I need to work!
Or:
Hey, check out the new calendar! We have <features>! Want a tour?
No, you’re describing features that have been in it for a while now, it’s not that new anymore
A few days later: Hey, check out the new calendar! We have <same list of features>! Want a tour?
Still no, and I don’t mean later, I just mean no
Did you mean New Teams? Or Classic Teams? Do you want to Keep Using New Teams? Do you want to try Classic Teams? You opened New Teams last time, do you want to use that one or Classic Teams? Not to be confused with Teams (for work or school), which is just New Teams! I think!
Why don’t you want to use the new Teams? Give us your feedback so we can ignore it.
Thank you for your feedback. Say, do you know there’s a new Teams available? Try it now!
Its super slow, one of the biggest misuses of electron I have seen. The website unironically works better than than the app. It seems to subtly break in weird ways every new release. Reactions are notifications. And the whole old/new teams thing causes a whole lot of confusion.
Yeah, this one and the same crap for the Outlook 365 stuff. So we can currently decide if we want to try the new Outlook, which removes a bunch of features I use, or just not switch to the new Outlook.
You would think the “old” Outlook then stays the same until we are forced to switch, but no, recently they changed the whole look of it somehow. I thought I got the update to new Outlook now by force but actually it is still the old Outlook, soooo, what?
Oh, and microsoft office is now Microsoft Copilot 365 Office Live for Workgroups.
I wish there was awards - here i crafted you a medal []—o
Oh yes, the old buttplug award!
It’s a medal, but I wont judge you solely on what you shove up your bum.
My company is trying to convince me to switch from draw.io to visio… why is being able to install the program to your local computer considered a premium feature of visio?
You can install draw.io
Its harder to enshittify a desktop app.
Lmfao New Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Teams New, which would you prefer?
Okay, this I can explain. New Microsoft Teams is the new app. It was also installed before the person installed the old Teams. “Microsoft Teams New” is actually just “Microsoft Teams”. The “new” is part of the Windows UI, not the name. It just denotes that it’s a new option for opening “msteams” links. It’s a new option because it was recently installed. The real solution to this is just don’t install two different Teams clients. The old one is actually retired now so that’s not an option and it’s a solved issue.
While this makes sense to you and me, how do you explain this to brenda from hr?
You don’t. You fix it with group policy or Intune and she never sees that.
While this is the answer for an IT Admin, it isn’t for companies on not-Windows and all the small/medium companies on O365 who were sold it on the promise of not needing IT Admins for their stuff.
Well then they got PT Barnum’d
not-Windows
The context is literally a Windows dialog box.
Not everyone at a company can be managed by group policy or in-tune or whatever. Like if they aren’t using windows. You can run into the same situation on macOS or Linux depending on if you have the old and/or new clients installed at the same time.
I hate that your solution is to remove more user control. I admit it’s probably the correct one… but I hate it.
If you’re responsible for enterprise workstations, the last thing you want is for Brenda in HR to be able to install/run unauthorized software in the first place. She has full access to employee files, payroll data, insurance, etc.
Her shit better be locked down.
Reactions are notifications.
This alone is why Teams needs to burn.
Honestly, the “View meeting chat notifications” not being globally mutable needs to fucking die. Our company uses Slack & Teams so the text chats in teams are never relevant to fucking anyone.
Also, super invase. Every damn start it tells me “features” that are obvious, no one cares about and I’ve seen already.
Reactions are notifications only by default, you can go turn those off in the settings. Easy enough.
Classic teams had a high contrast mode that worked very well. The background was dark and the text was bright yellow. The new version of teams also has high contrast but now the text and background are both shades of gray.
Grey on grey.
I want to meet the idiot who thought that was a good idea. Then kick ‘em in the nuts
Why is teams terrible?
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Why can I see multiple calendars in outlook but only see my calendar in teams? How does that make it useful to schedule team meetings?
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Why are updates always available even though I just updated?
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Why can I only pin one post in a group chat?
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Why does teams always use its own audio settings over the system settings?
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Why haven’t they implemented proper push to talk?
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Why is it that every few updates one of my meeting members randomly gets muted?
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Why does “Meet Now” basically accomplish what a group call does but the notifications don’t really go out?
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Why do I need to”Apps” in my teams?
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After my call hangs up because the phone app is having issues, how come the other person could still see and hear me?
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Why do you assume I want to use onedrive?
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Why can’t my favorites also appear in chats in a chronological order?
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Why is @everyone even a feature? This isn’t discord.
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You can see other people’s calendars in Teams, just click “schedule meeting” and use the scheduling assistant just like you would in outlook. If you’re looking at calendars manually before booking meetings you’re doing it wrong to start with.
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They aren’t.
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To prevent stupid people pinning so many messages that the feature becomes useless.
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Because the system settings are usually not what you want, most people don’t leave their headset on all day and only pick it up for calls.
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What’s wrong with Ctrl+Spacebar? I use it all the time
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Why are updates happening during your meetings? How would that even work?
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I’ll agree with this one, meet now isn’t useful. Just call the person.
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Because teams is a Communications AND Collaboration tool, if you’re only using it for communication you’re clearly haven’t taken any sort of training on how to use it properly or you’d be using the apps all the time.
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Never had this happen
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I agree with this one, I hate OneDrive, it’s bad data governance. Everything should live in a shared space at work.
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If you have so many favorites that it’s an issue, you’re doing it wrong. See #3.
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Because some types of organizations use this frequently, just because a feature doesn’t apply to your work situation doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to others.
Edit: Oof, people don’t like to have it pointed out that they lack education do they?
Found the Teams developer!
Nope I just use it every day in the standard office environment for which it was specifically intended.
Nah - its because you just dont understand how people work
This comment chain is the perfect encapsulation of a regular user vs an IT person with no people skills
I can’t tell which is supposed to be which
I’m having trouble logging in can you give me a hand?
Sure, just let me know what your ticket number is and I’ll inquire about the delayed response.
Neither can i.
I lied - i’m an it person and i’m far better at it than people.
I understand how people work, managers skimp on training because they think their users will understand without it, and users gripe about software because they didn’t get said training.
Expecting user training is not a stretch for software. Nobody expects you to know how pivot tables or formulas work in Excel without having received training at some point, but for some reason managers don’t expect the same from Teams’ features.
Why would I need training for a chat app ?
I have (as many many others) have used other apps before with no training at all without issues. Teams requires it because its UX is atrociousBecause it’s not a chat app. It’s a communications and collaboration platform. It has chat in it, but it also contains a significant amount of other functionality that you clearly aren’t even aware of.
People don’t even know what they don’t know about this app.
It’s like consider a full RV as a “car”, sure it can get you from a to b, but that’s not really it’s intended use case and you’re going to have a bad time if you’re trying to use it to drop your kids off at school every day. If you know how to drive a car, you’re probably still going to need extra training to both drive and use the features of the RV properly too.
Except the entire use case for teams in our organization (and I’m sure many others) is basically just to chat and make calls. None of the extra stuff is useful to us.
Also you can look at slack which would also be a communications/collaboration platform, and weirdly enough the UX is fine and usable without training. Just admit MS shat the bed and made some Frankenstein abomination that no one knows how to use correctly. It’s pretty typical of Microsoft (and apple too) to just deflect that the user is doing it wrong instead of admitting they could improve the experience.
To add to your RV analogy, Microsoft is selling an RV to moms and dads that just want to drop their kids to school. Sure sometimes they go on vacation and the RV is nice, but it’s not what the user needs. It’s also exactly why users hate it, they are given a monster truck just to go to the shop. (Plus in the case of software, they could have it transform as needed. The communication part could look like a regular sedan, but instead you are forced into the RV format at all times)Slack and Teams are not the same, Slack is a communications app, not a collaboration app.
I know how to use Teams properly, and I have entire departments (government, universities, etc) that I have trained to use it and they get mad every time their IT departments try to introduce a new product that Teams (and M365) already handle just fine.
Mom and Dad didn’t do their fucking research before buying it and didn’t bother to read the fucking manual after they did buy it.
Don’t tell me the average user is correct when I get called into help offices multiple times a year that are still using Excel sheets to manage their vacation requests, manage their tasks on a blackboard on the wall of the office (even though they’re half remote), build their HR forms in Adobe, and have network drives with 90,000 files in 20,000 folders where nobody can find anything all while already owning M365 licenses.
People aren’t using Teams’ integrated collaboration features properly, and it’s not because they’re worse than their existing processes and they have some sort of magic ultra-efficient system already, it’s because they simply do not know how to use them properly.
No matter the amount of training you give me, teams is a shit application and a time sink.
- chat sucks
- navigation sucks
- search sucks
- the calendar sucks
- the-run-all-your-apps-in-teams suck
Its lync merged with sharepoint, created in javascript.
I’ve yet to meet anyone that can show ROI on going teams.
Then you haven’t met an entire team that had proper training on how to use it.
I don’t mean a 1 hour lunch and learn.
- I have literally three people on my team. It is more efficient to have three people’s calendars up and just create a meeting for the open space. Why would I do something that is LESS efficient because that’s how teams wants me to work?
- I’m glad that you can agree that there aren’t always updates. Could you pleaes explain why, then, there has been an “Updates available” button on my teams for three weeks even after I press it?
- OK. There are again, three people on my team. Also, maybe don’t form chats with stupid people?
- Nobody in my organization uses a headset. Ever. We use bluetooth headphones.
- Because i’d like to set my own shortcut like literally every other voice application?
- There are not updates in my meeting. Every few updates of the application, when I am on a call with team members, someone randomly gets muted through no action of anyone in the call.
- I’ve tried to use the collabration tools. They aren’t that useful. OneNote is more useful. I understand if you are forced to use it because you don’t have more efficient methods of collaboration. But I do. So, again, why would I choose a less efficient way of collaboration?
- Yes, it’s a bug.
- Why do you think I have too many favorites? I have 5.
- The exact opposite arguement can be used for so many of your replies.
To prevent stupid people pinning so many messages that the feature becomes useless.
Because the system settings are usually not what you want, most people don’t leave their headset on all day and only pick it up for calls.
“Teams knows best!”
Teams in in use by a few hundred million users, and most of them don’t complain about them. So maybe they do know best.
Every time we have to join the Teams call of another company, every one of my colleagues (in a GSuite company) complains how bad Teams is at doing calls. Isn’t it supposed to be a tool for doing calls?
No, it’s not.
Teams is a Communications and Collaboration tool, not strictly a communications tool. It makes certain tradeoffs in order to optimize it for it’s intended use case.
So that’s why it’s much worse than Google Meet at doing the one thing I need to use it for.
Interesting choice by Microsoft to make everyone who isn’t using the entire suite think they’re just terrible at the job you expect from them.
Anyone who has a software license for Teams has their entire suite, and Microsoft doesn’t market enterprise products to end users.
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I think the calendar thing recently changed. It is now very similar to Outlook
Sorry for hijacking this, I have a similar issue. When you say similar to outlook, is there a way to see shared (group?) calendars in teams like in outlook? I feel very stupid for not finding this.
Yes, I just got the notification like yesterday or so and now I have the same list of calendars on the left side as I have it in Outlook. Maybe it still needs to roll out for you
That would be amazing timing, this use case came up a few days ago. I’ll check if there is an update, thanks for the info
- Why is the agenda of a meeting not visible in the mini-view of the meeting. Why do I need to click into the meeting details to see the agenda (which is often just a SharePoint link for most meetings).
Heads up, you can see multiple calendars at the same time. The apps thing is interesting because you can embed things like PBI dashboards into a channel, making it easy for everyone to access. It is possible that the configuration at your work is preventing these things. But even when properly configured, everything is just 16 easy clicks away. Ugg.
I guess there is an update I’m missing
It is like a quest I’m on with MS to let them know that poor configuration is the number one impediment to their products. Users can’t tell the difference and assume it is always MS, when it is only them a portion of the time. 😉
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You can look at a post, even click into it, but the notification will not clear until you leave for another page and go back
This makes me want to scream, daily. Holy hell please just mark as read when I open it, same for Outlook
