My company is finally moving to MS Teams and it's been quite the learning curve

We have been using (and still will be for a while) a mix of Skype for Business, Zoom and Slack.

I'm seeing that Teams doesn't seem to do the things that these other tools do very well and almost seems counterintuitive in some ways. The Chat feature of Teams seems VERY different than IM in Skype and I'm not really thrilled about it.

Is it just a matter of getting used to it?

The only thing that seems better to me so far is call audio seems much clearer and crisper than a Skype or Zoom call.

The best way I can describe MS Teams is like this:

It's not terrible, it's not good either, but in six months it will be normal to you.

Each day brings an new way to hate Teams. It has to be one of the sloppiest, laziest applications they've brought to market. Teams should have been named "Why can't I ....?"

The reason why you feel it's a piece of shit, is because in fact MS Teams is a piece of shit. Hold out as long as possible before moving to it. Notice that you can't use Skype and Teams at the same time? Piece....of....Shit.

Just wait a year or two, then your employer will move to the next shiny object...which will probably also suck.

Wait until you try to navigate a team file structure pop; pop out to reply to a chat and then go back to your file structure...

Yes, I don’t know what to make of this just yet.

I told my brother-in-law who sells software like Teams/licenses/support to big companies like mine

His reaction: “ Oh, it’s great, wait until you get used to it it’s really a great system, you’ll love it, I do”

Then I told a good friend of mine, who works in pharmaceutical clinical trials:

“Ugh. You’re gonna hate that. I’ve been using this piece of shit for years now and still can’t get used to it. You know those old machines that were a combination fax/scanner/printer/copier? That’s what Teams is, it doesn’t do any one thing very well.”

The company I used to work for used several other communication apps which worked well and were very user friendly. About a year ago they replaced these apps with Microsoft Teams. It was an instant feces fest. I found MS Teams very cumbersome to use, and I missed some of the features the old apps had. I never liked Teams as much as the previous apps. But I guess the IT folks liked it.

We've used it for a couple of years (I think...) It's ok, but also oh so irritating at times. Plus, it's half-ass integrated into everything else so it creates tons of new headaches. Sometimes I spend more time trying to get to a file someone shared with me than I was going to spend using the file itself to begin with.

Go with your initial instinct. It's no where near as intuitive as the other solutions you mentioned. But MS is pushing it and IT groups like it as it ends up being simpler to manage and probably less costly than cobbling together a best of breed solution. No body factors in lost productivity in those savings calcs!

If you are unfortunate enough to flit between multiple orgs with Teams environments that you've been invited to - your hatred of the app will reach epic proportions. It is absolutely horrible at managing those type of users.

I've used it at two companies. One migrated from Skype when that platform was acquired by MS.

I'm used to it. It has a lot of powerful tools. I think the meeting and video call quality is better than other platforms. File sharing is easier and it can be linked with SharePoint.

You can do some neat things with it too.

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
File sharing is easier and it can be linked with SharePoint.

This…

Matched with Sharepoint it’s actually pretty useful.

We have it at work. I like it. It far better than Cisco's Webex. I have a visceral hatred towards that product.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Slack.

Oh, my goodness! I thought my organization was the only one using that hot mess.

quote:

Originally posted by KevH:
The best way I can describe MS Teams is like this:

It's not terrible, it's not good either, but in six months it will be normal to you.

That's a good summary of my experience as well. Unless you make your living exclusively via meetings, I think they're all more or less the same when it comes to the basics.

Our company uses teams and never used anything else. Soooo I am used to it and hate using Zoom just because it's not familiar. I think they all take time to get used to the user interface and once you have it down not such a big deal. I don't really like any of them compared to in person collaboration.

I say watch some tutorial videos on youtube. There are some good independent reviewers / experts whose goal is putting out accurate information to grow their viewer base and their youtube income.

Every update brings new miserable mysteries in starting meetings and calls. The text conversation piece is like Slack, but done as a high school project. When the call and meeting functions work, they are great.

quote:

Originally posted by 2Adefender:
But I guess the IT folks liked it.

And that, of course, is all that really matters.


My organization went to Teams, even so far as all of our telephony goes through Teams. They screwed it up so bad, I basically do not get phone calls, and rarely do I receive audible voice messages. I love it, peace at last. IT could probably fix it, but no way am I going to kill the golden goose. Everything else pretty much meh, as far as I am concerned.

Once you realize the UI was designed by a drunk schizophrenic, it makes more sense. It doesn't work any better, but it makes sense why it's so fucked up.
The voice & meeting functions work well (enough). sometimes it doesn't like to answer a call and sometimes it takes forever for the other device to stop ringing if I have phone & laptop sitting right next to each other. Nothing like starting a call with laptop speakers & having phone still ringing next to it. Caller - 'what's that noise'. Me - 'you calling me'. They think I'm being my normal smartass self.
It takes a seance to get rid of the notification if I miss a call. ESPECIALLY when I clicked answer 10 times on the 1st ring because I was expecting the call & needed to talk right-the-fuck-now.

I hate chat in general, I'm not 15 chasing tail on icq any more. But the chat UI is the most unintuitive I've ever used - it pops out & won't go back to the main window. If you are on a meeting and you minimize it to side-bar chat, it pops up an extra icon, then I never can pick the correct window from the task bar to go back to the meeting, I gave up trying to get it on the 1st try a long time ago.

They took a whole bunch of different, sometimes half-baked projects & threw them together, then unleased it in an enterprise environment. What could go wrong?

You'll get used to it. The basic functionality is pretty good but their file/app system sucks.