back to article Microsoft Teams: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Microsoft continues to plug Teams as the "fastest growing application" in the company's history, though it is not sold separately, only as a feature of Office 365 (there is also a free version). At the same time, there are major feature gaps that are only now being plugged, and it is not easy to manage. What is the attraction …

  1. Khaptain Silver badge

    Facts and figures or forced feeding

    "Fewer than three years later, Microsoft claims over 500,000 organisations are using Teams and it has amassed over 13 million daily users+"

    My failing memory recalls that Teams was "forced" upon us, not as a choice but as an "update" to O365 Office Installations.. So kudos to Slacks because it is a choice not a force fed spoonfull.. ( We don't use Slacks so I can't comment on it)

    * Is it a game changer : Definately not, it's just more of the same ol, same ol in one box...

    * Is it particulary efficient, time saving or fruitfull.. No, not really, feels kinda mixed up and lost.

    * Does it create a problem for Skype users : Yes definately. Can't install Skype on an Enterprise machine, can't use Skype Enterprise when Teams is installed. Teams doesn't communicate directly with clients that use Skype.... grrrrrrr.

    You can send a link to a client but links in emails are often classified as spam or people are too wary to click on them.

    * Are we extremely happy with Teams.. No, not really, we can't decide if it's a Jack of all Trades or just another Microsoft Malware.....

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Teams is the symptom of a Microsoft that is all over the radar and desperately trying to stay relevant in a world where PCs are heading towards oblivion. Microsoft has failed all of its attempts to enter the portable hardware market (with the sole exception of the latest version of Surface, and that isn't exactly flying off the shelves), has lost control of the browser market and pathetically failed to regain it, and went straight into the wall with its phone attempt.

      That is why Microsoft is plugging everything it can into Azure, because that is the only long-term life buoy it has left. Cue the Frankenstein monster that is Teams, a patchwork of anything Microsoft can stitch together and pretend that they had planned it that way.

      1. Updraft102

        Teams is the symptom of a Microsoft that is all over the radar and desperately trying to stay relevant in a world where PCs are heading towards oblivion.

        Not this old trope again!

        There is no such world. PCs are not going anywhere... their market share has declined, as the people who have relatively simple media consumption needs have switched to simple media consumption devices, but PCs are far better than phones or tablets at too many things to suggest that they're heading towards oblivion.

        For years, the trend in the PC market was toward larger (and more) monitors, more mass storage, more performance, more of everything. Now we're supposed to believe that these things no longer matter because people have handheld devices with displays smaller than PCs ever had? Even the iPad Pro is small compared to a typical PC display these days.

        Microsoft doesn't need PCs to remain relevant. They're making a fortune these days, and it's not about PCs. Microsoft is all about the cloud these days, and it doesn't matter which media consumption devices are used at the end-user level.

        In terms of enterprise software, people will need spreadsheets, word processors, presentation software, and collaboration software regardless of the actual hardware in use, and MS is the de facto standard-bearer in all of those but the last (and they're working on that, though clumsily, as the article indicates). For those of us who got off the Microsoft crazy train at about the point that Windows 10 was released, it would be great if that was not the case, but we keep hearing "we need Office" as a reason why switching to Linux won't work. Who knows... maybe that will change too. MS clearly doesn't care much about Windows anymore.

        1. Bruce Ordway

          Real workers use PC's

          >> PCs are far better than phones or tablets at too many things

          >> to suggest that they're heading towards oblivion.

          I agree.

          The problem is that the market is saturated with powerful and reliable PCs.

          While there is still some room in the "other" device market.

          So incentive to improve PC related "stuff" has been on the decline.

          >>Teams

          I'm still using email and shared folder but.. my projects are not exactly large scale these days.

        2. JohnFen

          "PCs are not going anywhere"

          Certainly not. I've purchased 6 this year, and will be replacing my primary machine (which is currently a laptop) with a desktop very soon now.

        3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          You can view the effect of "that old trope" here.

          As you can see on the graph, PCs hit their maximum sales year in 2011, and have been on the decline ever since.

          I totally agree that PCs are the best. I have three in my home office, and two laptops for work. I would hate using a tablet for just about anything.

          But that does not change the fact that tablets and light computing units are replacing PCs in almost every customer-facing job, and tablets are now a favorite of non-IT home owners because they are less complicated to understand (and not having Windows makes their maintenance a lot simpler). Not to mention all the kids who won't even know what a PC is until they get to school, madly typing their SMSes and watching YouTube as they are.

          So yes, like it or not, PCs are going to be reserved to the (relatively) small group of people of actually need the power, group of which I am part.

      2. Tilda Rice

        Pascal, really?

        Surface is the #5 brand behind, HP, Lenovo, Apple and Dell. Not bad for a company new in PC hardware sales really.

        Is the PC not relevant? Everyone at this company still has one, even though they is around 80% smartphone allocation, and growing 30% tablet dual users.

        Teams isn't too bad. If you have 365, meetings from 365 email in your agenda, the SharePoint integration is actually works pretty well. It depends on the type of user you are, and what other services you have from MS. It is a pretty decent glue.

        As always, its "fashionable" (certainly round here) to bash MS, but still a bit on the juvenile side no?

        Funny was sat in a meeting today, hating on Android and the pain of enterprise management of it. I wish our pockets were deep enough to issue an iPhone to everyone outside of exceland Windows Phones were that device that filled the gap. Reliable, decent managability, decent in life support clearly stated (try finding that on a Sony website). Sad that MS gave up. But its not their fault people whined and moaned about it and it had an image problem. They were very decent.

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

      It is malware. We have it deactivated at all levels and it still autonomously installs itself on all our PCs.

    3. Krassi

      Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

      As a small business Office 365 subscriber, SkypefB stopped and Teams started one day a few weeks ago. I guess we knew it was coming in a general way, but still an inconvenience when it happened. SfB was OK more or less and we wouldn't have moved over by choice. The majority of our need is external communication, and Teams seems to be less easy to use and/or less functional for that.

      It has prompted us to look at paid for alternatives again (another factor, most alternatives we've used from time to time seem to have much better sound & video quality than SfB or Teams), but I guess as Teams is in the O365 subscription, MS will always count us as users.

      1. FrogsAndChips Silver badge

        Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

        At least you only have 1 tool left now. Here, we've had Teams installed for months but SfB is still there and people (me included) continue to use it by default, at least for IM. But Teams integration isn't fully completed, which leads to several "interesting" situations:

        - Teams calls do not reflect in SfB availability, so even when you are engaged in a Teams call, you can appear available in SfB and receive unwanted pings

        - you can't dial from Teams, so no phone calls, no pulling an external party in a meeting when they can't join in Teams - all this is still available in SfB

        - some of our external partners can't join Teams meetings, so we still need to create SfB invites for them. That's assuming you know from the start that there will be external attendees. Otherwise you need to cancel the Teams meeting and reissue as SfB. And yes, Teams chatbot, that's why I'll continue to create SfB meetings until you pry that possibility from my cold, dead hands!

        I also find the UI terrible, with Chat being at the center of everything and regrouping 1-1 discussions, meetings, group discussions with no way to filter. You get notified every time someone mentions you, add you to a group, adds a file to a group or just farts in your general direction, so you don't even notice when someone is actually chatting you for something that may require your attention.

        TL;DR: don't know if it's due to our particular rollout, or intrisic to Teams, but so far I'm not impressed despite interesting collaboration features.

        1. What? Me worry?

          Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

          Suspect it's your flavour of rollout. We're in the process of migrating to Office 365 and with many bells and whistles. I've found that Teams is a much easier to manage and stable tool than SfB was. I can call from within Teams on whatever device (mobile, pc, tablet) I happen to have at hand while working. using Teams with Planner, Whiteboard, OneNote & Lens has been relatively painless and actually improved our collaboration and info sharing. It's also meant that we've had to actually go through the years of accumulated digital cruft on file shares, desktop drives, etc and clean up. Which was a really good exercise- I went from trying to manage dozens of folder shares to having two O365 Groups (we had to bifurcate internal & external federation due to legal requirements).

          That said, there are definitely gripes:

          OneNote - Teams integration is shite if one has repeating Teams meetings scheduled in Outlook. Teams (or OneNote) won't auto-create a separate OneNote page per meeting.

          Adding external visitors to the federated Group SharePoint is a pia.

          And so forth, or, as it was in your case, it's an implementation issue and we've just borked it here. :)

        2. Kali-T

          Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

          RE: Notifications. A user can choose whether or not to be notified for Mentions, Messages and Other within the Settings accessed (click Profile Picture to access Settings). Each channel has additional ability to set notifications for All New Posts and Channel Mentions. The number of activity notifications will still show in the task bar and in the Activity icon if everything is turned to "off" - a user can filter the feed instead by team name or by key word. It really depends on what your channels are doing for you and how active you need to be in them.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

      "Does it create a problem for Skype users : Yes definately. Can't install Skype on an Enterprise machine, can't use Skype Enterprise when Teams is installed. Teams doesn't communicate directly with clients that use Skype.... grrrrrrr."

      Ummm nope your wrong, you can run both side by side as long as your O365 user acccount hasnt been set to teams only, your teams admin needed to enable islands and double check the federation rules between both systems (involves poweshell so scares the lazy to learn/cant click a button to do it brigade)

      The skype integration is doable as well, as i can be contacted from public skype and reply back, the arse is that contact search isnt available yet as far as i know so adding a public skype user is trickier than just searching for them

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

        "Ummm nope your wrong, you can run both side by side as long as your O365 user acccount hasnt been set to teams only, your teams admin needed to enable islands and double check the federation rules between both systems (involves poweshell so scares the lazy to learn/cant click a button to do it brigade)

        The skype integration is doable as well, as i can be contacted from public skype and reply back, the arse is that contact search isnt available yet as far as i know so adding a public skype user is trickier than just searching for them

        And you don't call that a problem ? We are talking about a suite that was written by the same company... Why the hell you we need to jump through hoops like this just to keep the same software running..

        And that PS script has to be run on all PCs, so it also means a GPO...

        And no searching within a corporate environment is just bollocks... That is what I call a problem...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

          Wow, that is impressivly factually incorrect

          1.\ the powershell for teams configuration is done entirely online, via a remote session to office 365

          2.\ The only GPO's i know of specific to the teams client are to do with specifying a share to grab the install sources from

          3.\ No searching in corp environment is cobblers, you have to enable global address book access in the teams admin site or via power shell, which is a good feature as you can define a specific address book access poilicy by subset or group of users.

          4.\ Skype and Skype for Business is just a rehash of java vs javascript, other than IM and Calling the similarity ends, it was poorly conceived marketing circle jerk, which is why if you scratch the surface in SfB everything is still in the lync namespace or the really old bit MS Office Communications Server. As i said you can enable external and guest access and be discoverable via Skype.

          Basically it sounds like who ever did your deployment shat the bed, failed to read any of the upgrade documentation, and did the opposite of any the messages in bold in the unread documentation which state your users will hate you if dont do this....

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge
            FAIL

            Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

            The search doesn't bloody work at all.

            Microsoft are aware of that, yet the multiple (duplicated) "stories" (or whatever they're calling bugs these days) has been open for years with no progress.

            Searching for a specific user seems to work, but everything else is just flat broken.

            1. Peterfrmrgstr

              Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

              OneNote Online is notarious for not having search working

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

            @AC

            DXC doesn't normally make a hash of things...

    5. GotThumbs

      Re: Facts and figures or forced feeding

      It was forced on us by our ITS dept.

      Actually walked through the office installing it.

      It's a huge resource hog as well.

      'Chatting' is not conducive with official communications IMO.

      An email is said and done...unless you replay. A Chat is a communication with no official end.

  2. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Business still runs on email

    "Still" - in my experience, 50% haven't yet started.

  3. lansalot

    and yet...

    We're having major issues with Teams for the last fortnight - users in my team showing as "Unknown User". Our desk tells us they're working with MS to resolve and this isn't just affecting us. Anyone else confirm?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: and yet...

      had this before when we had issues with syncing ad with azure ad and disabling access to global address list by mistake, which meant anyone not in your team but in your wider organisation was having details blocked.

  4. big_D Silver badge

    Maifest...

    We have it as part of Microsoft 365, but it is disabled in the management portal, it is disabled for each user and the installation manifest says Teams shouldn't be installed...

    Last month, it suddenly appeared on all PCs in the organisation! De-installing it didn't help, at next boot, it was installed again! In the end, we blacklisted the installer .exe and the client app in our AV software.

    1. TiredNConfused80

      Re: Maifest...

      You need to delete the DWORD entry for com.squirrel.Teams.Teams from Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

      That should stop it.

      There is also a PreventTeams Install that can go in HKLM\software\Policies\MIcrosoft\Office\16.0\common\officeupdate that should stop it if you've not had an affected Office Update applied yet...

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Maifest...

        Well, obviously.

        And Microsoft supporters are puzzled by the hatred.

  5. adam payne

    Microsoft claims over 500,000 organisations are using Teams

    That's because it's downloaded with O365.

    1. ravenviz Silver badge

      I wonder if the stats are 'have', 'have used' (e.g. set up a test Team), 'are using', or 'have a mature and active installation'.

  6. Oliver Humpage

    Not bad, just a bit rough

    Surprised to see so many people bashing it here. We've held off on both O365 and Teams until this summer, and having rolled them both out at the same time the users have loved it. While it has plenty of rough edges the benefits far outweigh the problems overall. We're a complex business with a lot of cross-dept and external collaboration and it's made life easier for everyone.

    I just wish MS would roll out the features at the top of the wish lists a bit quicker.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

      That's why the hate.

      So many essential features that are missing and have been for years, with no indication as to whether they'll ever happen.

      It's single fecking window which makes it literally impossible to refer to another conversation or "attachment" within Teams - flipping back and forth loses your place and often unloads the whole discussion from cache too.

      Worse, downloading files drops them into Downloads and vanishes. There is no UI whatsoever that will open the downloaded file, or even select the dratted thing.

      They've only just now made it possible to shut a "conversation" up without leaving it, and you still cannot silence alerts from an entire Team - you have to silence every conversation individually.

      And yes, many of these serious issues are 100% caused by the batshit crazy idea to use Electron. Which Slack also did, and I hated them for that too.

      1. JohnFen

        Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

        "It's single fecking window"

        Of all of the things that makes me hate Teams (and there's a lot), this is in my top 3.

        1. teknopaul

          Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

          Single window except for those fscking popups that clutter the corner of the screen.

          In my case even when the Teams screen is front and center messages from the meeting im in appear as notifications and require dismissing.

          1. JohnFen

            Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

            It took a bit of time, but I did manage to get all of those popups disabled, so it can be done. Now, I just keep the Teams toolbar icon enabled and I can see if something needs my attention because the little green dot turns red.

      2. CromBraan

        Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

        In SfB/Lync you can search for a username, then right-click > Call > Call tel number. You can also select to call a phone number from the chat window.

        In Teams you can only call using VoIP from a chat window. Again, if you search for a user you can only call them on VoIP.

        To call any of their numbers you first have to go to Contacts > Add Contact > Search user > Add Contact. Then you can find them in your address book and click the number to call it.

        So it's telling me I have to add every single user to my address book before I can call their number? Not to mention its in a completely separate window compared to the decade old Lync/Skype that has everything in one place.

        Its awful.

    2. JohnFen

      Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

      "While it has plenty of rough edges the benefits far outweigh the problems overall."

      I disagree. Teams is straight-up terrible. I truly wish that my employer didn't require its use -- I'd prefer using just straight-up SMS.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

        Agreed. I work from home, with multiple groups, and a lot of cross-group work. I haven't found Teams useful for anything. As I've mentioned before, usage is way down from our previous web-chat application, probably because the Teams UX is so miserable and performance is so wretched. (Today I had to close the Teams tab and open a new one, as it was taking upward of 30 seconds to respond to a click on the "Reply" link.)

        I can't think of a single thing Teams does well, or even adequately.

        1. JohnFen

          Re: Not bad, just a bit rough

          I've noticed that the people here who are pleased with Teams are talking about the conferencing stuff (using it as SfB). My employer doesn't use that functionality.

          I wonder if that's why I'm seeing positive comments when the Teams that I know is a dumpster fire -- I'm using a different functionality set.

  7. Updraft102

    "Unlike any other time other than Windows, we've not had this platform effect …

    What?

    Are you suggesting that Windows is a time, Mr. Nadella?

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      The man does have a gift for awkward phrasing.

  8. Kevin Johnston

    GDPR?

    I know there were concerns from a lot of Admins in the early days about the inability to actually delete chats on Teams which left a hole in GDPR compliance, did this ever get fixed or is it still only possible to Hide them?

  9. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

    That's funny, I thought I just saw some words that when read out loud sound a bit like "there's a Linux client coming'!

    1. Kabukiwookie

      I bet that interface will suck even more than its Windows equivalent, just to make sure Linux desktop users share in the pain.

  10. chuBb.
    Thumb Up

    Finally made sharpoint useable

    In my opinion Teams is the best client for sharpoint, since we have migrated to teams sharpoint is actually being used as intended rather than an over complicated shared drive.

    The biggest bug bear i have had has been in training and explaining to people that its not just chat and calls, but really a front end to all of office 365, but compared to the nightmare that is trying to keep an onprem SfB service up and working in hybrid mode its frictionless, *touches wood* yet to have a single issue with people's presentations not sharing properly when doing the present powerpoint kerfuffle unlike SfB, and federation with external orgs works as well, (had many many many many issues where the wrong flavor of ssl was in use at other companies SfB install, so at best only IM worked). Plus i really like the (mostly) consistent UX across platforms, as at the end of the day all the teams client is a chromeless edge window loading teams.microsoft.com with a couple of plugins to do better than browser AV integration, and being able to integrate ticketing systems and dashboards into tabs is great either by developing a proper itegration or just having a tab load a url of your choice.

    Finally the telephony side of it with direct routing (connect to your SBC and use your existing VoIP trunk and numbers) is fantastic, just load the teams client on to your mobile and you have a really easy number mobility option has massivly reduced the support burden for me, no longer have to recomend platform specific soft phones and know the difference between flavors etc for same functionality.

    1. Tilda Rice

      Re: Finally made sharpoint useable

      Yer I totally agree with that. SharePoint navigation is horrible unless someone in your org (or 3rd party) adds some much needed UI changes/sign posting/Intranet etc etc.

      Teams just cuts across all of that, its easy to go back and find what you are looking for. Its in the work group folder, or project folder of the name of the "thing" :)

      1. buxtonmarauder

        Re: Finally made sharpoint useable

        Sharepoint is the unmitigated spawn of the devil.. I've never once come across an implementation of that was usable.. It's the bane of my working life ! Microsoft should look to something like Atlasssian Confluence for how a knowledge store should be done. Simple and effective..

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Finally made sharpoint useable

          You think SharePoint is bad?

          Try using it with medical compliance rules added,

      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Finally made sharpoint useable

        it[']s easy to go back and find what you are looking for

        Oh, yes, terribly easy. Let's dump everything into a single-level hierarchy with an incredibly slow and awkward navigation system and broken search.

        Microsoft has reinvented the Box of Floppy Disks.

    2. JohnFen

      Re: Finally made sharpoint useable

      "explaining to people that its not just chat and calls, but really a front end to all of office 365"

      And it's really bad at being that as well.

  11. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
    Flame

    Teams...

    ... That's the thing which pops-up a sign-in/register invite every bloody time I turn my PCs on and simply won't go away no matter what I try.

    Oh I've found the "small circle thing" which is allegedly the secret doorway to a life of joy and nag-free happiness but none of the guides I have followed have ever made it go away, the coercive shite is back every time I turn my PCs on.

    I'm one of that rare breed here who is generally okay with Windows; but fuck you Microsoft. Fuck you. Cunts.

    1. TiredNConfused80

      Re: Teams...

      Posted this in reply to someone else ^^

      You need to delete the DWORD entry for com.squirrel.Teams.Teams from Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

      WOrked for us

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Teams...

        Squirrel! What the steaming FAT32 have squirrels got to do with an enterprise messaging platform?

        Or do I just assume that the whole thing was designed by 5 year olds.

      2. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Teams...

        @TiredNConfused80 - Many thanks. It's a REG_SZ on Windows 7 but in the location stated and removing that does seem to have worked.

        It appears we had been deleting another teams.exe related "Run" registry entry which is why it hadn't gone away.

    2. Happy_Jack

      Re: Teams...

      Just disable it from the startup tab in Task Manager. Worked for me.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    We've started using Teams but we're quickly running into issues that are not necesarily technical. Teams doesn't work well with the legislative framework my organisation must work within. Recording of information, text conversations and data sharing are all very important and very sensitive due to the nature of the information we work with. Teams only really works in the way MS want it to work. They want everything stored in OneDrive and users with admin loke powers of sharing and organising. We need to keep track of our data and Teams (actually 365 in general) makes this very hard to do in a controlled fashion.

    If you are happy to let your guys run free, create and store what they like, where they like and be damned with the consequences then it'll probably work pretty well for you.

    We use Skype as well. It's shite but still better then most of its rivals IMHO.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      So what solution works well in this environment?

  13. Wolfclaw

    Missing CON

    One big con, relying on Microsoft flaky communications, lost count how many times Teams and 365 falls over !

  14. Craig100

    Unified Comms

    Once upon a time there was just the phone. We could all talk to our clients and suppliers. Then there was Skype, we could all talk to our clients and suppliers on both. Then M$ bought Skype. Those that aren't Windows users are now cut out of the loop. I've been a Linux Mint user for about a decade now. Never had any problem till my last contract where they used Teams. There's a browser based version that's suddenly stopped working on Chrome-based browsers and will only work on Firefox or the Android Teams app. I just despair with M$. All the M$ employees I know never fail to tell me "we're not the same company we used to be", but they are to Windows users. I reckon it's marketing led. Releasing software the devs haven't finished, etc. I just despair with large corporations in general.

  15. AndrueC Silver badge
    Meh

    The UI needs more work. For some reason my recent contacts persists in showing me people I haven't chatted to very much. It's also not immediately obvious how to find a contact, despite how frequently I have to do it. And why can't I just right-click a contact (or a selection of contacts) and then 'Start conversation' or 'Invite into conversation'? Adding someone to an existing video call is more convoluted than it ought to be.

    But when you work out how to get it to do what you want to do then it's fine and it seems quite capable of handling three remote contacts in the same video call which is good.

    I just wish it was a little more intuitive.

    1. JohnFen

      Not to mention the largely nonexistent documentation for it. Want to find out how to do something that should be obvious? Good luck getting that information from Microsoft.

      1. njc12345

        Working for a Microsoft Gold partner this was exactly the conversation I had with Microsoft staff from the UK and the US earlier this week. Information of Teams is available if you know where but it is very fragmented

  16. Mickey Porkpies
    Meh

    It's collaboration Jim but not as we know it

    slack clone, sucks up processing, great Sharepoint interface (as mentioned) nice video conferencing for 4 people (don't try to collaborate with any more than 4) it's moving in the right direction so I guess once it is almost perfect they will drop it for something else.

  17. Sandy Scott

    Best conferencing app we've used

    My organisation has recently rolled out Teams, and the biggest improvement I've noticed over other communication platforms is a far better audio/video conferencing experience*, particularly when taking with China (I visit frequently for work). In the past, Skype or Skype for Business has been unusably bad, so we used regular phones. Nowadays WeChat seems to be the most reliable system by a nose, but Teams calls have less delay and better audio quality, so you can actually have a conversation instead of the usual garbled and stuttering meetings. Usable screen sharing is a welcome bonus.

    * I realise this is surprisng, given that Teams is basically just a branding wrapper for Skype for Business. However, MS have definitely done something better, maybe just giving the system an larger amount of bandwidth & resources until they've got everyone hooked.

  18. a_yank_lurker

    Yawn

    Slurp seems to be late to the party and overhypes their dismal 'solution' as an all encompassing panacea. Many have a love-mostly hate relationship with IM clients in the office as they a source of easy harassment when having to send an email or horrors actually walk to the person's desk would be more appropriate. The worst abuse is when one is going through their morning hate mail to see what is causing their hind quarters to burn and some pings with a question about an email just as you begin to read them. I have them ask about something that was assigned to me overnight which I had not even had a chance to review with expectation that I could give an intelligent answer about it. Teams just another moronic excuse to needlessly harass people and cause a drop in productivity.

  19. Twilight

    It could be a good tool but, right now, it has WAY too many issues. Search doesn't work. Wiki functionality is horrible (or was that in Sharepoint). Linking from one thing to another is way harder than it should be. Web apps could be better done separately rather than in Teams. Sharepoint integration is just odd - things you would think would integrate don't and things you wouldn't expect do. etc...

  20. juvenihil

    Complexity killed the cat

    I still don't understand what was wrong with encrypted e-mails and landline phones. Actually, there was nothing wrong. Why should I be able to send emojis to co-workers? And why would I need a social network of co-workers? I don't even have facebook.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Complexity killed the cat

      "why would I need a social network of co-workers?"

      So you can discuss things of mutual concern and help others solve their work related problems.

      It's not to share cat pictures doh!

      FTR presumably you are aware that TheRegister forums are social networking?

    2. njc12345

      Re: Complexity killed the cat

      You have to remember different generations have different communication and collaboration needs. Millennial will make up over 50% of the workforce by 2020 and they were brought up with technology always on generation with the ability to use multiple instant communication methods. They are not interested in email as it is too slow.

      Product like Teams although not perfect are bringing that multi modal communications into the work force. Without products like this then people resource to Whats App and other consumer based applications to conduct corporate business which results in data outside the organisations control and a GDPR nightmare

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "A Linux client is in development"

    That will go down well on the El Reg forums won't it?

  22. Avatar of They
    Mushroom

    It's awful

    There is a bug that means if your password expires while logged in it can crash teams, putting you into a loop of entering a password, crash, enter password etc. Officially the only cure is reinstall (yes that is what I read in forums)

    Another (may work) solution is to remove all your credentials for Teams in credential manager. I had 51 separate credentials as Teams never closes any down. After deleting them all I had a default 17 appear (what do 17 logins actually do???) It is just so badly written like every other MS product. I mean a password expiring is a real world everyday situation and MS can't understand that.

    And they designed it so you can't copy folders, any sub-folders just get brought together causing carnage for some teams who were not aware before hand.

    1. Hans 1
      Windows

      Re: It's awful

      The credential manager trick works, BTW, I too had a gazillion there ...

      The first 7 or so versions would not upgrade automatically, MS cannot write an installer, I had to download the latest, uninstall old Teams, install new version.

      Sometimes, it will not let me watch video chat because of a GPU driver issue, I have Intel HD GPU core in my CPU with latest driver - a "real" reboot fixes this. Restarting the graphics system with CTRL+WIN+SHIFT+B plus 3 sacrificed chicken in the bath does not help.

      The sad thing, though, is that you can read passwords from the credential manager in clear text, which means that any software that uses the credential manager, like Teams, is inherently insecure trash that can leak your password.

      PS: I have mentioned this credential manager thing on here before and got a steep heap of downvotes, I do not care, nor does Windows, downvote all you want it will still leak your credential passwords to any program that knows the trick - I actively use the trick in a solution of mine - it seems to be an effective way of both hiding passwords from windevs and retrieving them with ease.

  23. JohnFen

    Hate hate hate

    God, how I hate Teams. That my employer requires us to use it makes me irritated by my employer as well.

  24. bigtreeman

    Microsofties

    I find organisations and individuals use Microsoft because they use Microsoft.

    They freaking love anything that comes out of Redmond.

    No matter how convoluted and unexplainable they just love it.

    I started a new job Monday and they have Teams and Sharepoint and everything else MS.

    my office386 password is HaTeOrifac3.

    I used to use Office many years ago, now have to use it again.

    Initially looking at Teams is good, actually using it is painful and time consuming.

    1. JohnFen

      Re: Microsofties

      "my office386 password is HaTeOrifac3"

      You'd better change it now.

      1. bigtreeman

        Re: Microsofties

        care factor ?

        it's only work crap, not my personal life

        1. JohnFen

          Re: Microsofties

          I'd think it would be even more important if it's a work-related account. Should someone mess with it, your employer would very likely fire you for negligence.

  25. steviebuk Silver badge

    It's a mess regarding the "free" version

    "Teams has plenty of frustrations, but it also plays a key role in pulling together the parts of Microsoft's sprawling Office 365 platform in a manner that users can adopt. Teams also fits well with Microsoft's collaboration hardware, from Surface Hub to the newly announced Surface Neo and Duo."

    Read like an advert that bit.

    So you want to invite someone who's not in an organisation and not in a business. Use the free version. It states it for people not in a business, free lancers don't always have a business account.

    You tell them to download Teams from Play on their mobile. They do, they try to sign in with their hotmail account. It claims "Sign-in error. It looks like you aren't a member of any organisation in Teams. Have someone invite you to use the app, or set up Teams for your org. If you've just created a new organisation, try clicking the link in your e-mail." But it's supposed to be a fucking free version, just give me the fucking option to sign in as a guest!

    So you choose "Set up teams". Takes you out of the fucking app to the website to sign in. You do, then that pages tells you to download the app from the Play store. And there we have it. Stuck in a never ending fucking loop. As despite claiming there is now a "free" version. Trying to get someone who's not in Office 365 signed in as just a fucking guest, is impossible.

    Choosing "Sign up for free" makes no fucking difference.

    If they want it to take over, they need to sort that out. As at the moment we only use it internally and use Webex for conference calls.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's a mess regarding the "free" version

      So complain to MS then - stop whinging here to people who can't many any difference.

      Whilst your moaning may make you feel better, it does nothing to improve anyone else's life.

  26. daveforever

    Personally I think that one of the main problems is people thinking of Microsoft Teams as.a pure-placed product. If you think of it as a hub/gateway to pull resources together from numerous Microsoft (and third party) products in one place, combined with Microsoft Teams Phone System functionality - and of course meetings and video conferencing - you start to see a solution that is far more than the sum of its parts. For many businesses, Microsoft Teams will be able to serve as a primary workspace. This is exactly why Salesforce has purchased Slack.

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