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Ask HN: Why is Microsoft Teams still so bad?

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

#491

Post by vasvir »

nl wrote: post #376
philippejara wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of crazy to look back and see just how much worse we are today than some years ago with regards to this stuff. I remember an old social media named Orkut, had pretty much everything facebook had and more, also had a huge userbase in brazil and india(?) iirc, but just goot overtaken by facebook. Original skype would probably work better than zoom does today with a few tweaks(I assume, could be wrong there wh…

WTF is it with this weird "things were better in the old days" nostalgia? They really, really weren't! > Original skype would probably work better than zoom does today with a few tweaks When it came out, Skype was amazing because it let you get video calls on your computer. The audio was flaky (I paid for a number for a work line and yeah - wasn't good!), the video broke up all the time, and it dropped out a lot. But…

Skype was "good" back then because it could pierce firewalls and nat setups with its p2p magic. See https://www.theregister.com/2003/10/08/how_does_skype_get_th... but if you look around you will find more info...

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

#492

Post by archi42 »

ranguna wrote: post #398
archi42 wrote: post #356

I never experienced any crashes, and neither can I recall a team mate complaining about that . Bugs I encountered: 1. Opening the link to a scheduled meeting opens the browser (good), but then clicking the "open in teams" and confirming the external URL handler in the browser does... Nothing. Restarting teams fixes that. (Happens for my team mates as well). 2. I have a dedicated USB mic that's always on, while my spe…

Have you never sent a message with images just to later find out that the message wasn't sent and it wouldn't even show up on the chat so you could retry? Have you never tried to join a meeting where teams made you just sit there for a minute until you decide to restart it? Have you ever called someone at the same time as they call you, ending you with teams saying that they are calling you at the same time as you ar…

Now that you say it, I might have lost an image once?

Maybe our usage is just to basic; it's a tool for voice/video calls/meetings and some basic chatting. We can't even attach files anymore because our company doesn't really use teams and didn't extend the necessary licence (only our team/suborg is allowed to use it, since we need something like it and the internal alternative is not built, yet... Don't ask, not my paygrade to decide or influence that).

I don't do a lot of searching. Maybe it's broken, maybe not. Wouldn't be too surprised if it is for some users and works okay for others.

Meetings are in our outlook calendar, with working notifications.

No idea about my status, never noticed it to be off.

I'd happily trade Windows for Linux if that meant no custom background images. But I'm not surprised that the Linux client is more limited.

I'm probably just lucky we use teams only a little.

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

#493

Post by bvirkler »

rwalle wrote: post #463
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…

My favorite one is that when someone "likes" or use whatever "emotion" on your message, even if you are currently taking to the person, you need to click "activity" page in order to clear that notification and then come back

Scrolling up and back down will also clear the notification.

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

#494

Post by happymellon »

prmoustache wrote: post #473
happymellon wrote: post #389

One thing that has been referenced but not really talked about is that Teams doesn't want to be a tool, but the complete solution. With the built in SharePoint, and Office editors you can see that it is designed for a very particular use case. The problem is that most people on Hacker News are not just document sharing and editing. Most people are not doing this, and especially not in the half baked Office online too…

It could still be much more efficient and less buggy. A sort of Zulip + Office 365 and external apps integration.

It could be a lot more efficient by dumping the Teams tab. I don't understand these cards that have chat threads against them as they are large enough that the information contained in them is useless.

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

#495

Post by vasvir »

KronisLV wrote: post #385
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/…

> Then they bought Skype and it went downhill from there. I still remember older versions of Skype, which felt usable and rock solid. I actually used some from I think http://www.oldversion.com/windows/skype/ back in the day for my personal stuff, because the reworked UI was just worse. But nowadays, I don't really care that much, whether I have to use Skype, Teams, Zoom, Slack, Discord, Jitsi, Mattermost, Rocket.Cha…

Matrix is a nice federated protocol and with its client element (formerly riot) https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/element both demonstrate some respect for user privacy boundaries.

But since it is mostly a network effects game and the setup of keys may be somewhat of putting I am not very optimistic.

Its' a shame though...

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

#496

Post by Mindwipe »

marvinvz wrote: post #362
twobitshifter wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started a new job and decided to go all in on using o365, including keeping notes in onenote. They’re launching a new version next month and I’m hoping that things go in the right direction and they keep the features i’ve just started to use.

I signed into o365 a few days ago and it recommended a random excel file of a completely unrelated department to me. Not sure why an office application needs to "recommend" files.

Indeed. The Sharepoint app for iOS is particularly fun for this.

I have gone to the trouble of installing a Sharepoint application. The idea that people are doing this who do not want a directory tree as 99.99999% of what they do is insane.

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

#497

Post by Ajunne »

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. And the second reason is "We have KPI's with Microsoft about teams: they guarantee that it works in x% of the time, and they guarantee that it complies with our security guidelines". Notably the security is something that can never be beaten by any other application, be it on of off premises. No matter how brilliant it is. It can never beat Teams, because Teams is "good enough" and "free" at the same time.

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

#499

Post by xmcqdpt2 »

andylynch wrote: post #489
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/…

Microsoft also had MindAlign, which was an excellent no-nonsense group chat originally spun off from UBS (!) and widely liked by its users at various big firms, mostly banks- basically it was like IRC with management tools and record keeping added to meet compliance and audit needs. Bits got folded into Lync/ Skype for Business but those were never as good and certain customers are still using the original product.

I work at a bank and we currently (but for how long??) use Symphony which is "Slack but for finance"

https://symphony.com/

It's way better than teams in core features, although integrations are missing, and it doesn't have call functionality.

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

#500

Post by reuben364 »

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…

- Web interface is not supported on Firefox, last I tried.

I try and avoid installing native clients for occasional uses.

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