Microsoft Teams Now Available for Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Teams Now Available for Linux

#11

Post by chrisandchris » Sun, Feb 09, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

pathartl wrote: post #8

blaser-waffle wrote: post #7

Neat. One step closer to using my own Linux laptop in lieu of the companies standard-issue M$ laptop. Would still rather use Slack though. Teams needs to work on their interface.

This is a pretty common sentiment whenever Teams comes up on HN. In what ways is Slack's interface better?

In my opinion:

- Teams does not keep that much history on the computer and needs to go very early to the internet and retrieve more history (basically as soon as you start scrolling). Slack keeps quite much history on the computer.

- Teams does not support simultaneous logins. Need to switch to another account - log out and log in again! Slack supports that since quite some time.

- I‘m not actually sure whether Teams supports threads or not. If they do, that speaks for the UI (i didn‘t find it then). If they don‘t, it‘s a feature I love in Slack.

- Generally I think Teams can do quite a lot ot of stuff but everything needs a bit more clicks than Slack. Channels are hidden behind „Chats“ rather than having a shortcut, ...

Re: Microsoft Teams Now Available for Linux

#12

Post by pathartl » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

chrisandchris wrote: post #11

pathartl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty common sentiment whenever Teams comes up on HN. In what ways is Slack's interface better?

In my opinion: - Teams does not keep that much history on the computer and needs to go very early to the internet and retrieve more history (basically as soon as you start scrolling). Slack keeps quite much history on the computer. - Teams does not support simultaneous logins. Need to switch to another account - log out and log in again! Slack supports that since quite some time. - I‘m not actually sure whether Teams…

- Yeah it's a little annoying

- This is currently my only notable complaint about the platform. This is kind of a pain point with anything MS/365 these days. Some things will let you switch accounts no problem, others not so much

- Teams does have threads. It was one of the features that made it stand out when it first release. I'm not sure why it would be considered bad UX/UI though, you just click reply under someone's message?

- I can understand the confusion to this sort of, but ultimately it comes down to the purpose of Slack vs Teams. Teams isn't just chat, it's positioning itself to be essentially your company intranet. Being able to pin OneNote notebooks, DevOps boards, Word Docs, etc to the tabs on the top bar has been very useful for us. MS also seems to be working on some very deep integration/features tat have yet to fully materialized. Kaizala is something that has been deprecated and all effort is being pushed to bring its features to Teams.

One more thing I'd like to throw in is I've never had an issue with the quality of calls, be it audio or video. We also use Microsoft Phone System so Teams ends up being our virtual handset. It's pretty fantastic and has been the best implementation I've seen.

All this being said, if Discord had an enterprise solution I'd almost prefer it. The ability to just drop into a voice channel and the management of roles is just SO good.

Re: Microsoft Teams Now Available for Linux

#13

Post by Rebles » Tue, Feb 11, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

pathartl wrote: post #8

blaser-waffle wrote: post #7

Neat. One step closer to using my own Linux laptop in lieu of the companies standard-issue M$ laptop. Would still rather use Slack though. Teams needs to work on their interface.

This is a pretty common sentiment whenever Teams comes up on HN. In what ways is Slack's interface better?

My critique at work includes, MS has advised our IT department not to have team workspaces larger than 150 people. Our company is 120,000. My product has 8,000 people working on it. No one can find the right teams workspace to have the discussion–also the same discussion is happening in multiple channels across different workspaces. Also, their UI is clunky. Their "new post" and "comment on threads" is confusing for some in our workforce because they're often next to each other. Also, their Activities/Feeds is pretty simple ATM. I want more control over what shows up there.

The pros include, good audio calls. Compared to Skype for Business, it's a much needed improvement. Their Office 365 integration is also pretty good a la google docs.

It's a resource hog, but that's the status quo these days.

Re: Microsoft Teams Now Available for Linux

#14

Post by chrisandchris » Tue, Feb 11, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

pathartl wrote: post #12

chrisandchris wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion: - Teams does not keep that much history on the computer and needs to go very early to the internet and retrieve more history (basically as soon as you start scrolling). Slack keeps quite much history on the computer. - Teams does not support simultaneous logins. Need to switch to another account - log out and log in again! Slack supports that since quite some time. - I‘m not actually sure whether Teams…

- Yeah it's a little annoying - This is currently my only notable complaint about the platform. This is kind of a pain point with anything MS/365 these days. Some things will let you switch accounts no problem, others not so much - Teams does have threads. It was one of the features that made it stand out when it first release. I'm not sure why it would be considered bad UX/UI though, you just click reply under someo…

I‘m probably a bit biased because I use Slack a lot and when I‘m using Teams it‘s more because I‘m forced to.

The thing about threads is that they don‘t behave the same as in Slack. It‘s not that they are shown as a single entry inside the history (collapsed), rather they are responses which contain the original message in it. Of course, opinions differ and sometimes I think Slack threads confusing. But it‘s how I grep up and what I got to like.

I think that is also the one thing that makes Teams very bad (not in comparison, but in absolute terms): it tries to be a lot of things but does not really excel at something. For example, calls have amazing quality but it‘s just not possible to share more than 1 screen at the same time. So we still have to use TeamViewer to control anothers computer. Document integration feels a bit like Sharepoint and OneDrive, but it‘s really sonething in between.

In general, I think Teams biggest advantage is just the close integration into the whole Microsoft stack. That is something they can do quite well. I also think it‘s not something to boil down on Teams vs. Slack because they try to be something different even when they have similarities.