Ask Lemmy

Teams for chat and video is generally OK but when managers start trying to do scheduling, task lists, and kanbans in it it becomes annoying in my experience. A software should have a definitive scope and not try to be an everything tool. If you want that interconnectivity then it's better to implement a standard which works with another tool that is designed for that purpose instead of tacking on a bunch of shit.

Otherwise, I end up wondering "Ok where the fuck is that scheduled meeting? Was in in outlook? Was it in the teams calendar? Was it in the teams Kanban? Was it a task list item in Teams? Was it in slack? Was it in google calendar? Oh, no, it was in ZOOM! Oh wait, fuck, I actually have a meeting with this client through SKYPE FOR BUSINESS at the same time the zoom meeting starts.... Shit."

Want to use a Bluetooth headset? Roll the dice on if it will work at any point in time. 3 back to back meetings? Load the 4th and it's reset your audio to laptop speakers, or now your webcam won't work.

Classic teams had a high contrast mode that worked very well. The background was dark and the text was bright yellow. The new version of teams also has high contrast but now the text and background are both shades of gray.

IMHO it just tries to do everything and fails at that. It's not horrible, but not great either.

Chat and calls should be the focus, but even that is buggy. In the "teams" feature I personally have zero overview and I miss a lot of stuff. But that might be user error

It's the entitlement. On Linux, it would startup on boot, and wasn't in the settings panel that disables start on boot apps. Even Discord respects that setting, but Teams had its own startup system that I had to go purge by hand.

Current pet peeve: I'm in a meeting, and I click to switch to another app to check something, then I click the Teams icon to switch back to Teams. Clearly, in this case, I want to get back to the meeting.

Instead, it shows me the calendar view. WTF, Microsoft?

I'm a Slack guy, when forced to use Teams it just always tried to get in the way of anything I wanted to do and Slack would get out of the way.

Sadly Slack are busy trying to make Slack as obnoxious as Teams.

For a counterpoint, my wife loves Teams. She uses it all day every day, and only has good things to say about it.

My computer is old and slow so loading teams is like elder abuse

Teams is an abomination of Skype for business, lynx, and SharePoint. If you have ever used any of those then you know how bad that is.

So, I really don't like Teams. What follows is basically an unedited stream-of-consciousness that came out of me after reading the question. I've reread it and now realize that it comes across as extremely angry and dramatic. I would not put Teams in the top 50 difficulties of my life, but I do not have much patience for incompetent software. I'm also just in a bad mood and decided to swing at Teams.

Fuck Teams' stupid fucking pseudo-markdown WYSIWYG editor. Either be markdown or don't, you fucking useless cretinous moron! If you're going to automatically insert an interactive code block when I enter a triple-backtick, then you should god damned well do the same fucking thing when I paste in a fully formed code block. (edit here) I do not want to see triple backticks, a new line, my code in a stupid non-monospace font, and then another triple backticks. I wanted a code block which is why I indicated my intention for it to be rendered as one by using the triple fucking backticks that you recognize(end edit). This is just one example, and I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time I use that piece of shit chatbox.

I use Linux, which means I use Teams exclusively through the browser (they used to have an electron app for Linux but they got tired of dealing with it and deprecated it). I'd be fine with the browser thing were it not for the fact that when I type in the Teams URI, there's a 50/50 chance that I'll be sent to Teams V1 versus Teams V2. Like, why the fuck are you like this, Teams? I have clicked the god damned "take me to V2" button so many times! I think there's like, an option or something for it that I've also clicked. (edit here) I have cleared my cookies and browser data for Teams, I have completely nuked ~/.{config,cache}/google-chrome for Teams, I have installed Chrome Beta for Teams, and still the issue persists (end edit). I do not want to wait 30 fucking seconds for the V2 version of the page to load when I already waited 10-15 seconds. Don't get me started on how broken the "install this as an app" bullshit is, ugh fuck I hate it.

Finally, Teams has been really great at not fucking reading my auth cookie recently. My company uses Okta for SSO, and like, fuck man, most shitty web apps seem to get it. My browser stores a JWT, it sends that shit in a cookie, some magic crypto shit happens, and boom I'm authorized. Teams is just fucking deaf to this though, and it makes me click a "sign in again" button or some shit, which then has a chance to proc the V1 vs V2 UI issue. Like, come the fuck on bro I SEE the cookie when I look at my network requests, just put the fries in the bag and stop making my life that little bit more irritating.

I hate how if you gotta work on something in an app in Teams, you can't have the chats open. Excel in Teams lacks a lot of features, though luckily you can launch in native app, but then co-operating is out the window.

Overall, the big issues I have are that when it breaks it does so unpredictably so I can't learn how to do things right.

1. It was unclear to me for a long time how to find files correctly (it still kind of is unclear). Our institution uses SharePoint for some things, Teams for other stuff, and some folks use OneDrive. It's hard to know how these things talk to each other--sometimes this data is actually shared between those ecosystems and sometimes it isn't. It's probably how some people are settings things up, but I blame the software for making those relationships somewhat obtuse. My understanding is that everything on the backend is actually SharePoint and Teams and OneDrive are just different front ends with different permissions structures. That has helped somewhat but it's an imperfect understanding.
2. Joining Teams meeting links from other institutions is fraught with problems. If I have a Zoom link from somewhere else, I click on the link and the meeting starts. That's it. I click a Teams link on a not-work computer and it can be difficult to open (SSO something something probably). So instead I'll open in browser, which may result in a "browser not supported error" on every browser (including Edge). Even if I can get in my webcam might not support backgrounds. Or the microphone/camera selection I made in browser permissions is ignored by Teams. Any one of these events occurring appears to be random, so I have to plan on a few extra minutes before Teams meetings to log in.
3. Notifications don't go always go away when seen. I sometimes have to click out if the window and click back in.
4. Incomplete markdown support (let me copy/paste a table from pandas!)
5. This is dumb, but gif selection sucks. They must do some sort of aggressive filter for work or something, and maybe that's an enterprise decision. But if I want to communicate exclusively via gifs that is my prerogative, thank you.

I’ve only experienced it from Linux and it’s a huge exercise in pain. It sometimes works, but it’s just stacks and stacks of hacks.

All the other things I’ve used work for video conferencing have worked fine in Linux or a browser.

Let me check that picture that my colleague sent me. Hmm alright, let's close that. Aaaand I closed Teams. Shit.

Default opening Office documents in Teams is also a pain. "Oh wait no! Don't open it in Teams!" Here you go 2 minutes wasted waiting for the doc to open so that you can close it.

I just want a compact contact list with status icons. Pining conversations is a shitty solution. Just give me back icq/aim/yahoo/etc

Why does ux layout eat so much screen space? We have a channel for the team to say hello at the start of shift, the lunch/goodnight.

The UX lets you see maybe 3-4 total posts at once. That is one example, but it takes so much effort of scrolling to be sure you’ve seen everything

At least in my work instance, by default it sends me an alert any time someone posts a reaction emoji in one of the dozen chat channels.

I hate that it doesn't have some key features, like the ability to easily annotate on the screen as a viewer. The presenter (host?) must allow it first, which for me often results in frustration as I try to guide them to the top tool bar to find it.

They also don't have custom emojis like my beloved Slack. And dear god Teams sends you a desktop notification every time someone reacts with an emoji, I disabled that quick.

I also hated how they did groups/channels, also called Teams, a name I hate (why have a feature with the same name as your product?). It was like a shitty forum board, where someone would post a topic and everyone commented underneath it, made it impossible to scroll through. They changed it recently though for a much more user friendly UI.

My favorite Teams feature is that I can mute other participants on a meeting. I can feel the Thrill course through me every time.

The amount of employer tracking that’s possible there makes me always feel that I’m being watched and metric’ed on my ‘productivity’

Right click open....

In browser?

In Teams?

...

Using a kettle full of live mice?

In app (the program you installed in your computer specifically for opening these documents)?

Oh why not meet about the document from yesterday? Nah, not that one, do a search!... Okay never mind! Their search is junk. Ah well let's meet to talk about it! I can't read, can you maximize your screen so we can see and follow? Just double click here, right click here, scroll down! Push it, twist it, pull it, pipit!!!! Oh hey! We can't hear you! Can you check yorvmike"

I suspect the answer by a great many people will boil down to "because I used it [and it's shit]"