Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#441

Post by cr1895 » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:10 AM UTC

roydivision wrote: post #379

My 2 cents of venting on this sorry excuse of software - Backtick formatting in a chat post only works after typing the closing backtick, deleting it, re-typing it - Text copied from a conversation is polluted with names and time stamps. "I really want this feature" said nobody ever - The mute/unmute button is hard to find, I don't think I've ever attended a Teams meeting without someone struggling with this. Teams s…

Most frustrating for me is that I receive no call notifications. Well, sometimes I do, but most of the time I do not and I need to wait until a call has been missed before I see who’s called. Unless I happen to be in the chat window of the person who’s calling…then I can see the “join call” button active.

It’s maddening and IT can’t solve it properly, and I’m not the only one at my company having this issue.

Utter garbage app and user experience.

Edit: even worse is if I’m being called into an existing group call…there’s no way to accept.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#442

Post by stunt » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:10 AM UTC

UX is garbage on Teams. Specially for chat compared to something like Slack. Video calls, I can live with it even though I prefer Zoom and Google Meet over Teams.

If a company uses Teams for anything more than video call, to me it's a sign that they don't care about productivity of their employees.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#443

Post by peyton » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:12 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

“Can I speak with your compliance department?”

Enterprise sales calls these days.

Lots of rules.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#444

Post by planede » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:13 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

Also "we are paying for O365 already, we get Teams for free*".

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#445

Post by Lutger » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:16 AM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #85

Long ago Microsoft had MSN Messenger, which was one of the leading messaging apps. It worked well, and many 'normal' users were using it. Then Microsoft dissolved the team behind it and screwed up the product so bad with bloatware and ads that everyone moved to WhatsApp (except in the US where people went back to texting). Then Microsoft came out with Communicator, renamed it to Lync, which was a corporate messenger/…

Isn't teams just a reskinned SharePoint with messenging and conference capabilities added? Does it use tech from the Skype acquisition?

I do remember everybody using Skype, it was so popular it created a verb of its own, we used to skype with each other. Microsoft paid what was an enormous amount for it back then, then basically let it rot. Really surprising.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#446

Post by roydivision » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

cr1895 wrote: post #441

roydivision wrote: post #379

My 2 cents of venting on this sorry excuse of software - Backtick formatting in a chat post only works after typing the closing backtick, deleting it, re-typing it - Text copied from a conversation is polluted with names and time stamps. "I really want this feature" said nobody ever - The mute/unmute button is hard to find, I don't think I've ever attended a Teams meeting without someone struggling with this. Teams s…

Most frustrating for me is that I receive no call notifications. Well, sometimes I do, but most of the time I do not and I need to wait until a call has been missed before I see who’s called. Unless I happen to be in the chat window of the person who’s calling…then I can see the “join call” button active. It’s maddening and IT can’t solve it properly, and I’m not the only one at my company having this issue. Utter ga…

Yup, I have the same, to the point where (corp office) I have to run Skype solely to know when I have an incoming call as it has a proper, working notification mechanism.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#447

Post by blodkorv » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:17 AM UTC

planede wrote: post #444

zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

Also "we are paying for O365 already, we get Teams for free*".

This is the real reason why my company uses teams. Its really hard to motivate the cost of slack when you already are paying for teams.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#448

Post by pasc1878 » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:18 AM UTC

barnabee wrote: post #158

Maarten88 wrote: post #85

Long ago Microsoft had MSN Messenger, which was one of the leading messaging apps. It worked well, and many 'normal' users were using it. Then Microsoft dissolved the team behind it and screwed up the product so bad with bloatware and ads that everyone moved to WhatsApp (except in the US where people went back to texting). Then Microsoft came out with Communicator, renamed it to Lync, which was a corporate messenger/…

They also bought (and ruined) MindAlign which had originally been developed and spun off from UBS investment bank and was light years ahead of its time. What they turned it into / replaced it with was such a depressing step backwards.

Well that was just a nice GUI on top of IRC, and probably some work on the server.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#449

Post by k_sze » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:24 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #402

Teams doesn't have to be good to succeed. It just has to exist. It's not even very important how good it is. Given it exists, IT will make everyone use it on Microsoft's behalf regardless of how bad it is. Or another way to look at it is that the real customers for Teams are IT departments. It makes their lives easier because they don't have to do anything and it meets all the compliance requirements they are suppose…

This. Can we use anti-trust laws to break it up?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

#450

Post by robertlagrant » Thu, Sep 22, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

bartread wrote: post #419

roydivision wrote: post #379

My 2 cents of venting on this sorry excuse of software - Backtick formatting in a chat post only works after typing the closing backtick, deleting it, re-typing it - Text copied from a conversation is polluted with names and time stamps. "I really want this feature" said nobody ever - The mute/unmute button is hard to find, I don't think I've ever attended a Teams meeting without someone struggling with this. Teams s…

I'll add more: - Fries CPU and GPU on video calls, making it difficult to use other applications or demo when screensharing - Interacts unfavourably with at least some WiFi drivers leading to unidirectional and bidirectional losses of connectivity - Copy and paste randomly break so you can't copy content from Teams or paste anything into it; applies to both text and images - Doesn't honour setting not to automaticall…

We have Zoom in the office and the meeting room kit is fantastic. I just need to be in the room, open Zoom on my laptop and click Share Screen and it shares to the screen in the room. Never had such an easy time of it.