The Horror of Microsoft Teams • Hacker News Board

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#61

Post by dbg31415 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:03 PM UTC

Teams does suck, but man... it's marginally better than Skype for Business. Skype for Business was so bad, you could send a message on your phone and you'd never see it on your desktop, and vise versa. Or you'd get bombarded with notifications on your phone while you were typing on your desktop. Microsoft would point to your local IT team's setup causing caching issues or what have you... and notifications were never in real-time, calls were impossible and would constantly drop people, and heaven help you if you ever changed your password; you'd sign in again only to find all of your messages had been erased and wouldn't ever re-download from the server. It was such a productivity loss for everyone and I'm guessing the only people who ever had a complete and sequential chat history of my chats were probably NSA employees who couldn't care less.

It's absurd that Microsoft didn't just buy Slack when they had the chance. Building this in-house has forced a lot of people to use some really shitty software.

https://www.inc.com/business-insider/bill-gates-passed-on-sl...

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#62

Post by mullingitover » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:04 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #58

nevir wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our CEO gave up on slack long ago. Email is the best way to get their attention.

Slack and Teams are different. Slack has muting. Teams does not.

I'll note that we never actually acted on this plan. The idea came up when we were comparing the two. The designated Microsoft Guy at the office was pushing Teams, because it's free as in beer. However, the inability to mute or leave a channel was a big 'wtf' and I'm honestly shocked that two years later they still haven't fixed it. It was a show-stopper for us back then and still would be now.

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#63

Post by cryptozeus » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:07 PM UTC

realPubkey wrote: post #45

cryptozeus wrote: post #43

Interestingly we do not have issues like this within our company. Recently switched from emails to Ms team and have never used slack. We are pretty happy with ms team with for few reasons: screen share, seems video or audio call, great support on desktop and mobile app, connection with everything Microsoft like word, excel, onenote etc. we are greatly enjoying it.

How big is your company? Have you tried the search 'feature'?

I’d say about 200 people IT team. Our company culture is not very tightly interested with each other so may be there is less chatter around the company channels. At this point its email tool in chat format. I personally love it.

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#64

Post by lowdose » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

heroprotagonist wrote: post #3

For extra fun, block access to the telemetry endpoint and watch Teams' memory footprint bloat to crazy levels as the data accumulates and re-attempts the sending. There's some fun inspecting this data, too..

A real Easter egg?

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#65

Post by dflock » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

emptysongglass wrote: post #50

How is it that businesses get sold on these poor groupware solutions when they can: a. self-host open-source Zulip (or Matrix/Riot, which is not that good compared to plain old The Lounge IRC) totally free b. pay for hosted software that’s open-source so their information isn’t hostaged when they decide their solution is crap? I see these kinds of poor choices made all the time. People usually don’t want to do the re…

> self host ... totally free

Self hosting stuff is work for someone, and either needs hardware or rented VMs - it's the opposite of "totally free". This is why this happens.

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#66

Post by lowdose » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #47

Microsoft ruins Skype, then tries making their own communication tool. Ugh. What is it again that Microsoft is getting such accolades for? Visual Studio Code is fantastic. Github is great, but they bought that. Office 365? OneDrive? I'll give you those. Hosted Exchange is a thorn in my side. Internet Explorer and Edge are (were?) both a joke. I don't have any experience with Azure. Xbox is great. Their server product…

> Microsoft ruins Skype, then tries making their own communication tool.

Even some rumors MS is in the market to buy Zoom.

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#67

Post by EvanAnderson » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #57

Neil44 wrote: post #10

I can believe they’re overtaking slack because they make Teams an aggressive default install with the Office 365 client, and it’s replacing Skype for Business.

It is not in fact installed with every Office 365 install. I just had Teams pushed with a separate group policy because of this. They will overtake Slack easily since it is a free addition to most 365 plans

Newer Office 365 client builds are installing it by default. Worse, they didn't move away from the per-user installation. Instead they just took the brain-damaged route of force-installing it inside each user's profile when they logon. I think that's a real dick move, but, then again, I sometimes think I'm the last admin in the world who gives a damn about efficiency.

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#68

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #58

nevir wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our CEO gave up on slack long ago. Email is the best way to get their attention.

Slack and Teams are different. Slack has muting. Teams does not.

[deleted]

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#69

Post by empath75 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #59

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct. The company where I am currently working at was using Slack but recently decided to stop paying for Slack and instead use Teams since they were already paying for a subscription to Office 365 for each employee. I hate it. My colleagues hate it. The UI is terrible. Most of the time navigating between the channels is a pain and the UI is just horrendous. I think the funniest thing that was released late…

>The emojis are of bad quality and look like crap. Maybe an oversite on my part, but I didn't even consider this as I was evaluating an enterprise productivity app...

I think people underestimate the value in making intra office communication an enjoyable experience.

Re: The Horror of Microsoft Teams

#70

Post by empath75 » Mon, Aug 12, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

dflock wrote: post #65

emptysongglass wrote: post #50

How is it that businesses get sold on these poor groupware solutions when they can: a. self-host open-source Zulip (or Matrix/Riot, which is not that good compared to plain old The Lounge IRC) totally free b. pay for hosted software that’s open-source so their information isn’t hostaged when they decide their solution is crap? I see these kinds of poor choices made all the time. People usually don’t want to do the re…

> self host ... totally free Self hosting stuff is work for someone, and either needs hardware or rented VMs - it's the opposite of "totally free". This is why this happens.

Not to mention the engineering hours spent managing it.