Ask Lemmy

My work Teams is only really active for my department's channels. My department is about 10 or so people, so I don't suffer from the same problems others have mentioned with notifications for reactions and whatnot. My two gripes are:

• I'll send a writeup from my Google Pixel phone while on-site doing field work and include inline photos. I'll proofread my message and everything is good. After I click send, my phone shows my post truncated in the group chat. I cannot see the full message, and it looks like I deleted half my written message. From the desktop or my coworker's Samsung phone, everything shows up fine.

• I'll often find Teams silently closed on my workstation. I might minimize it occasionally, but I don't believe I ever close it, and Windows reliability history doesn't show any crashes.

What annoys me is that they seem to just ignore any requests to fix things that are broken. For instance, I don't want to see everyone's incoming video by default. I have to turn it off for. Every. Single. Meeting.

And I'm hardly the only one. Here is an example of someone asking for this, back in 2020:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/can-incoming-video-have-a-default-to-turn-off/98c198b5-e9ad-48d5-80d4-dc7051968e51

I suspect that Microsoft views Teams users as basically hostages since it's often something forced onto a big user base at many companies. If you hate it? Too bad: if you want to stay employed, you'll just use it.

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.

Because in terms of features/usability it was a downgrade from Skype for Business for my usage.

Sorting the contacts was better in Skype and I was able to have the window as a narrow strip on the leftmost screen, for showing the status of all team members. Teams doesn't allow resizing freely.

When watching a screen share of somebody, Teams has a lot of unnecessary unhidable UI elements that just take up space. For the ones that you can hide there is no setting to have it that way by default, and there are also no shortcuts for them.

Also screen sharing was quite laggy right after switching from Skype, but that might have been an internal IT problem, not sure. But it didn't help make Teams more popular anyhow.

If I want to copy a text message, I have to avoid the emoji pop-up, then very carefully click and drag over the text, making sure I don't also copy the user name. Then I have to paste it in Notepad to edit out any weird hidden characters. Copy it again and paste it.

If I want to send a reaction emoji, it's just a clock away.

Who the hell designed this abomination?

Laggy on osx

It demands too much screen space. you can't rum less than full screen without losing important things. Even full screen I often can' see the presentation clearly because it shrunk the presentation in favor of avitars / videos of other people.

now that I'm old I cannot see tiny text like I used to. I thus get really mad at useless spate while I'm strurgling to read the presentation. you will understand when you turn 45 too.

I don't hate or despise teams. It's far more useful in most normal office environments to have your communication and your collaboration occur in one tool.

I think most of the people that hate it are trying to only use it for communication, usually because they received no training on how to use the collaboration parts or an unwillingness by the organization to change the way they are doing things when they got M365 licenses.

If you still have a shared network drive while you're using Teams, your organization is doing it wrong.

If you are sending attachments in e-mails while you're using Teams, your organization is doing it wrong.

If you are sending e-mails to get things approved while you're using Teams, your organization is doing it wrong.

If you aren't using planner to co-ordinate tasks for small groups of people while you're using Teams, your organization is doing it wrong.

If your organization is paying for m365 licenses just for you to have e-mail and the desktop office suite, they're doing it wrong.

Get TRAINING

Bad UI/UX.

When I screenshare code with my colleages, the 1 fps can be irritating. You miss subtle editing, scrolling, etc in those 1 s.

I can ignore most other things. We only use it for online meetings and screen sharing.

Which makes the new apparent calendar and appointment integration somewhat irritating. Microsoft loves to push their shit.

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

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.