Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 57 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#41

Post by basch »

darklajid wrote: post #14

We're using it. It is bad. Company just started to introduce Salck, MS announced this thing and we had to jump ship because everything they deliver is considered flawless in certain circles. The mobile app is crap. There's no Linux client. No 3rd party integration that I've seen so far. Lots of bugs and I highly doubt that this project will move/improve at a VS Code level. A beta for your corporate communication need…

>No 3rd party integration that I've seen so far.

It has all sorts of connectors. What do you mean by this?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#42

Post by basch »

r00fus wrote: post #37
donmatito wrote: post #4

My opinion(1), after playing a while with MS Teams: The pros : the product is quite good, let say it is good enough and much better than the status quo of relying on emails or Whatsapp. It is integrated with the Office suite, and if I understand correctly, will be free for pro Office users. It has a handful of very interesting product decisions, like threaded replies and iframe apps. The cons : MS Teams is not as pol…

> It is integrated with the Office suite What does this mean, really? Can I start teams chats from Office? Can I see all chats/emails from a person or group? My main gripe with MS Office is that it's 2017 and they still treat Mac as an inferior platform. No delayed emails, bad handling of bullet lists, and the obvious limitations in using any groupware functionality (this I can understand). About the one good side is…

In the Office 365 world Groups are everything. Groups are a shared mailbox and a sharepoint site w/ document library. All permissions are determined by permission to the mailbox. "Integration with Office" means integration with Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync more than it means integration with Excel, Word etc.

A team exists inside a group. When a file is uploaded, it really uploads to sharepoint/onedrive. Each Channel creates a new folder inside the sharepoint document library.

What teams really is is a new skin over the top of sharepoint/skypelync/exchange. You have most of the same features you had in the "older" (last years new) Groups interface, plus you have a persistent chat that skype is missing. A bunch of the buttons are rearranged slightly from groups.

Whats somewhat frustrating is how features and buttons are duplicated three times between a Team, a Group, and a Yammer group. You really need strong organizational policy to standardize behavior, or you will end up with chaos. It's somewhat that obvious Microsoft is trying to converge these three products until they are 100% feature complete, and then merge them into one thing. Groups are a near Yammer clone built on top of Sharepoint/Exchange, and Teams are basically the same thing, but drawn to look like Slack.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#43

Post by basch »

gwicks56 wrote: post #35
Spooky23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the product is that it really exists to keep big companies on the O365 E3+ plans. Microsoft's big focus now is to retain subscription revenue. Skype and OneDrive are shit and MS is trying to bulk up the ecosystem around these products. If you work for a big company, you're not going to get approval to POC Slack, Dropbox, Webex, etc as long as you're stuck with the Microsoft all you can eat subscripti…

OneDrive ( then SkyDrive ) used to be awesome. A folder showing all my files, including the online only ones. Then they ruined it. I still don't understand why.

if you are talking about the desktop client and placeholders, they will probably be coming back eventually in some form.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#44

Post by basch »

apapli wrote: post #15

Yes, adoption is still an issue for us as it is in a pre-release phase and we have too many options (yammer, email, outlook groups, slack etc) but it's very promising. Once they officially launch it that will help (hopefully) provide a clearer product direction. It's pretty feature rich for an app in "preview". It's also free, and I like the tabbed experience. Bringing in Microsoft Planner, some document libraries an…

>we have too many options (yammer, email, outlook groups, slack etc)

and thats the million dollar problem. year after year microsoft announces a new product / "best practice" as THE way to collaborate.

The sharepoint team is clawing back power after being pushed behind the scenes for a bit.

How can you be confident enough to move forward with groups when the sync client just started working, and they already are pushing out something new that is nearly identical!

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#45

Post by basch »

pvdebbe wrote: post #22

Our company bought into Office 365 ecosystem and Teams was a natural choice to try. We haven't used Slack or similar tool before. Well, Teams allows discussions, but at least in November its built-in Skype for Business (SfB) client worked exactly like the other SfB clients work: not at all well with others. (Serious issues with race conditions on how the server sends the messages to what client, with several listenin…

>(Serious issues with race conditions on how the server sends the messages to what client, with several listening clients everything turns into a mess!)

This makes the mobile client nearly unusable in its current incarnation. I can be sitting on Facebook on my desktop and Messenger on my phone and alternate each sentence between each device. I cannot pick up my phone and continue a Skype for Business conversation I was just having on my desktop. Cant transfer the existing conversation at all. It is almost, nearly, surprising how ill conceived and poorly executed the experience is. I end up switching back to outlook when a person and I want to have a conversation while we constantly bounce between devices, because our email works and syncs everywhere perfectly.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#46

Post by r00fus »

basch wrote: post #42
r00fus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is integrated with the Office suite What does this mean, really? Can I start teams chats from Office? Can I see all chats/emails from a person or group? My main gripe with MS Office is that it's 2017 and they still treat Mac as an inferior platform. No delayed emails, bad handling of bullet lists, and the obvious limitations in using any groupware functionality (this I can understand). About the one good side is…

In the Office 365 world Groups are everything. Groups are a shared mailbox and a sharepoint site w/ document library. All permissions are determined by permission to the mailbox. "Integration with Office" means integration with Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync more than it means integration with Excel, Word etc. A team exists inside a group. When a file is uploaded, it really uploads to sharepoint/onedrive. Each Channel cr…

Interesting - so Slack offers external access (single channel guest) - is there any similar functionality? Given Teams is tied to Exchange groups, would it be expensive to add an external user?

We deal with external companies a lot where I work and having that feature is pretty useful.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#47

Post by darklajid »

apapli wrote: post #17
darklajid wrote: post #14

We're using it. It is bad. Company just started to introduce Salck, MS announced this thing and we had to jump ship because everything they deliver is considered flawless in certain circles. The mobile app is crap. There's no Linux client. No 3rd party integration that I've seen so far. Lots of bugs and I highly doubt that this project will move/improve at a VS Code level. A beta for your corporate communication need…

You do know it is still in preview right? Also I use the web client and it works for me, although have to agree it would be nice if the mobile app had access to some of the tabbed content. What else is wrong with the mobile app from your perspective? Finally, here is the API reference if you want to look at it: https://dev.office.com/microsoft-teams I am looking forward to when they integrate Flow with Teams. That co…

I know that it is in preview, which is why I'm so upset about the idea of adopting it at this point. Seriously: I'm ranting about this product because it is unfinished and unpolished, but obviously the blame for adopting this thing lies in this company. I wouldn't criticize it that much if I'd be able to watch the painful first steps as a bystander..

You use the web client? I assume you mean teams.microsoft.com? The URL that I see nowhere in my notifications etc? Every notification mail links to a landing page that wants me to download a "native" client (even if none exists for the platform I'm on). Notifications also never include any details: They say "Look, you missed stuff on our service. Come back!" instead of actually.. providing any information. The web client has quite some bugs, a fun one is opening a document (which embeds a 365 viewer, I guess) and resizing the window. Last I checked the document view cannot grow. Lots and lots of issues like that.

That API site? Yes, I've seen that. I think last time I checked you had to submit your stuff to let MS decide if it'll be part of a non-existent future "app store" thing. At least for Office365 hosted instances?

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#48

Post by darklajid »

izacus wrote: post #24
darklajid wrote: post #14

We're using it. It is bad. Company just started to introduce Salck, MS announced this thing and we had to jump ship because everything they deliver is considered flawless in certain circles. The mobile app is crap. There's no Linux client. No 3rd party integration that I've seen so far. Lots of bugs and I highly doubt that this project will move/improve at a VS Code level. A beta for your corporate communication need…

Uhh, does Slack ship Linux client now?

I'm not sure how official it is, but I can pacaur -S slack on Linux, yes.

(As others said: You get just an Electron package, which isn't ideal. But.. you get something)

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#49

Post by it33 »

gkoberger wrote: post #13
hiby007 wrote: post #10

I think slack should charge on per user basis for any number or team, instead of having to pay for the same user in two different teams. I also think there should be cheaper/better competitor for slack in the market.

You won't get cheaper AND better. There's already a ton of competition. Cheaper exists (everything from IRC to HipChat to Mattermost to dozens of Slack clones[1]); you're more than welcome to use any of those. The reason people don't is because Slack is the best (great UI, works well, lots of integrations, network effect, etc). [1] http://blog.capterra.com/the-top-13-slack-alternatives/

Hi @gkoberger, Mattermost team here. Thanks for the mention.

I'd share that Mattermost has gotten popular as a Slack-alternative recently. There's hundreds of contributors and we're now available in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Dutch and Russian--whereas Slack is English-only.

Also, the open source community has added many features Slack doesn't offer, like threaded messaging, multi-team accounts, markdown support, etc. See: https://www.mattermost.org/what-slack-might-learn-from-its-o...

Right now, Mattermost is most popular among IT organizations looking for an open source, private cloud messaging solution they can control and customize, and we're branching out from there.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

#50

Post by mdekkers »

rarrrrrr wrote: post #7

Microsoft is smart to build their own Outlook killer, and they certainly succeeded in freaking Slack out[1]. We (SpiderOak) evaluated teams as competitive research when building Semaphor [2] (our own end-to-end encrypted alternative to Slack/HipChat.) I found Teams to be a credible offering. It's shortcomings are mostly about being very new (e.g. no linux client yet, some unpolished UI associated with window resizing…

Wow, what a negative, condescending article.
Post reply on HN