back to article Microsoft promises it's made Teams less confusing and resource hungry

Microsoft has released preview versions of an improved Teams desktop client for Windows that it aimed to make "twice as fast while using half the system resources" while also reducing user confusion and improving interface consistency. The software colossus announced what it called a "new era for Teams" on Monday, claiming the …

  1. Return To Sender
    Stop

    Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

    What the hell is shimmering (apart from the obvious naturally occurring optical effect)? Can anybody remember sitting in front of Teams saying "Bloody shimmering, it's destroying my user experience! Bastards!"? I mean, lots of other things screw the user experience and are the cause of invective, but shimmering? Last time I thought about that, I was using CRT monitors, fercrhissakes.

    I must be getting too old for this, losing track of the latest buzzwords, obviously.

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

      Teams will now automatically apply sunglasses to your face image. That way you are sure never ever to (see) shimmer again.

      The colour of glasses can be adjusted through an adaptive range comprising of a blue-red combination for optimal comfort.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

        If you still believe that Microsoft can produce usable code, surely those glasses must be pink..

      2. Red Ted
        Go

        Re: Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

        Joo-Jantu 2000 Peril Sensitive Sun Glasses?

    2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: What the hell is shimmering?

      Actually, they mean simmering, which refers to your mood and, if the state of the chips inside the device you are using Teams with.

      1. sebacoustic

        Re: What the hell is shimmering?

        Simmering, as in "chips frying": that was my true experience, my work computer (Dell workstation laptop with Fedora) used to go 100%CPU / fans whining, regularly at 4pm, with Teams being the culprit. Not sure what was going on but a "kill -9" would always sort it out.

        Was the official "Teams beta" (rpm or flatpak, can't remember) from Microsoft at the time.

        Now using the "PWA" in chrome, works pretty well. Compared to the "Skype for Business" we had before, it's light years ahead.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What the hell is shimmering?

        Shimmering is what you see on the dance floor in Southend

    3. ThomH

      Re: Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

      Having looked it up, shimmering is indeed the optical effect, which is now often used in UIs to indicate that something is loading. So Microsoft's use of it appears to be both oblique and entirely redundant — reduced wait times would necessarily mean lowered shimmering.

      1. Return To Sender

        Re: Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

        Ta for that. So it is basically the bleeding obvious, even though I still say I hadn't spotted it as such. Silly me, there had to be a way of soaking up all those spare CPU/GPU cycles just lying around. Presumably reducing it is one of the ways MS have managed to ostensibly get Teams using "half the system resources".

        Usual moan, stop giving me pointless 'features' and just give me something that lets me do the job in hand quickly, effectively and without faff. Don't get me wrong, I actually quite like Teams when it's working properly, I just hate having to re-learn application interfaces every time some sodding UI design team comes up with a new 'philosophy'

  2. Mishak Silver badge

    "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

    Let's say it takes 5 second to make a switch.

    That means about 40 minutes are spent "playing about" with Teams every working day.

    I thought this was supposed to be a "productivity aid"?

    Did I miss something?

    1. Natalie Gritpants Jr

      Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

      10,000 / 20 / 8 = 62.5

      Do they really think the typical user is switching teams view every minute continuously? I guess some poor souls are having to have multiple chats and copy-pasting between as their job (PHB), but I thought that was the point of popping out chats.

      1. ITMA Silver badge

        Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

        Most of the "switches" probably users trying to find stuff that someone in Microsoft has decided to move within Teams from where it usually is to some stupid place for the usual reasons - i.e. no damn reason at all, simply because they could.

        Not because any, you know actual customers, thought the UI needed to be "fiddled about" with for the millionth time.

        1. cmdrklarg

          Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

          There's an actual reason: it justifies their job and paycheck.

    2. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

      It's more like productivity spyware.

      It's not designed to help you, but to give numbers to micromanagers to sweat over.

    3. NoneSuch Silver badge

      Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

      It's not a productivity aid. It's a monthly cash cow for MS accountants.

      When they charge you for storage (and access, and alert emails), it's not in their best interest to be efficient. Uploading my 8GB Exchange mailbox to the Cloud Exchange transformed it into 14GB+.

    4. mevets

      Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

      Sure, because "typical user" of teams is some poor tester who isn't allowed to switch to zoom.

      Everyone else, tries it once, and goes back to zoom, webex, ...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

        If only (sighs)

        Our place seems happily wedded to "everything MS throws at us - including all the new features they change every week". And they reckon they'll be able to turn Skype off this year meaning we'll have no choice but to use the polished t**d with a bit of lipstick.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

        Everyone else who tries Teams _wishes_ they could use something else.

        Many of us were/are stuck with Teams, because the Central Corporate IT Bureaucracy was entirely populated by Microsoft types who were completely devoted only to Microsoft products and would tolerate no other.

        1. Korev Silver badge
          Gimp

          Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

          Many of us were/are stuck with Teams, because the Central Corporate IT Bureaucracy was entirely populated by Microsoft types who were completely devoted only to Microsoft products and would tolerate no other.

          Don't forget that Teams comes bundled with Office365; to run Zoom, Slack etc on top costs more money.

          I have no idea how this has been allowed to get past the competition regulators!

          1. 43300 Silver badge

            Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

            That's the main point - we use Teams. I rolled it out, because I couldn't justify any other platform when we got it on the platform we were already paying for. Plus it integrates with single sign-on, etc.

            Microsoft is bad at a lot of things, but when it comes to pulling users in and holding them there by means of many hooks between their various services they are at the top of their game. I agree the competition regulators ought to be taking more of an interest (and that applies to the aggressive way they've pushed Edge too).

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

        There was a time when I cared. I was younger, then.

        Today, I realise that nothing I do at work matters to "the world" - I simply get paid for attendance, for participating in rituals, the performance of ceremonies, and not for results as I understand them. I am a priest. This month, They want some performance around Teams and maybe some training on where now to find some Windows Doo-Hickey from 2004, complete with Windows ME styling, that used to be buried in one menu-tree and now its buried behind an option hidden in an "innovation space", but, only tor a few weeks? Sure, Whatever, They ask I do!

        Engage Happy Mask and think of the money!!

    5. teknopaul

      Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

      Re: "did I miss something"

      Just a few meetingsthatcouldhavebeenemails.

    6. NATTtrash
      Trollface

      Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

      Message to MS - free suggestion!

      I know, I know, perhaps somewhat legacy product design idea, but what about perhaps maybe improve quicker switching by removing superfluous log out steps?

      --- Which account do you want to sign out of?

      --- Please confirm which account you want to sign out.

      --- Are you sure you want to sign out of your account?

      --- Do you want this device to remember you when you sign out?

      --- Signing out will influence your user experience negatively. Do you want to continue?

      --- <Fill in your own $USER observation...>

    7. 43300 Silver badge

      Re: "On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month"

      "I thought this was supposed to be a "productivity aid"?

      Did I miss something?"

      It just follows the usual pattern of generating more work. Email was going to be a 'productivity aid' and lead to the 'paperless office'. All that has happened is that communication has vastly increased (if people had to write an actual letter and post it, they wouldn't bother unless it was important), and in many cases a lot more time is put into dealing with emails (and messsages on assorted platforms) than was ever spent shuffling paper.

  3. Mishak Silver badge

    "To optimize navigation"

    Stop moving everything around in the interface each release?

    1. navarac Silver badge

      Re: "To optimize navigation"

      Too many interns, not enough professionals at Microsoft, methinks, who have just go to f--k about with the UI of everything.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "To optimize navigation"

      [ Gnome devs have entered the chat ]

    3. fajensen

      Re: "To optimize navigation"

      What else does Microsoft have?

      The problem with very succesful products, like Windows and Office is that their book value is extremely high.

      Somebody coming along with radical innovation, even a quantum leap in usability or performance, that person is not going to get a hero's welcome. Quite the opposite: He/She/Other will be branded "A destroyer of Value" and will be send off to whatever bright, open-spaced, designer-furniture and rare-branded eco coffee, compound that represents the coporate nuclear waste dump and shall forver be given innovative, intelectually stimulating, make-work projects, --- that will somehow never make it into Product!

      About 40, when they burn out, they realise and despair.

  4. Dave K

    Basic UX problems

    Quicker switching and performance improvements all sound good, but then again Microsoft has a track record of messing things up, so I'm not exactly holding my breath here. Saying that, nice for them to admit for once that many of the frustrations people experience with using Microsoft products are rooted in basic UX problems. People have been saying that to them for years and not just about Teams, however that feedback usually falls on deaf ears.

    Anyway, with any luck they've got rid of that infuriating feature where the entire application dims and a dialog pops up to tell me "We're opening this file in Excel!" every single time I tell it to open a file in Excel. That has to be in the running for the most-pointless-dialog-box ever award...

    1. Kevin Johnston

      Re: Basic UX problems

      Upvoted for the 'opening in Excel' painpoint

    2. ITMA Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Basic UX problems

      "That has to be in the running for the most-pointless-dialog-box ever award"

      No no no no....

      The most two most useless (recent) dialogs by Microsoft have to be during installation of Windows:

      "Please wait while we work our magic..."

      and:

      "Leave everything to us...."

      You must be effing joking!!! Leaving everything to you Microsoft ?!?!?!?!?

      1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Basic UX problems

        "Leave everything to us...."

        At that point what they are actually talking about is your data..

      2. cmdrklarg

        Re: Basic UX problems

        *** Leaving everything to you Microsoft ?!?!?!?!? ***

        That will be in the next EULA. It's like writing a will!

    3. JimboSmith

      Re: Basic UX problems

      My Samsung phone went through a software update a while ago. Prior to this it said Radio at the top Left hand corner of the screen and on the Right corner was Scan and a three dot menu button. That is still there but it has had an addition to the screen architecture.

      Now the top two thirds of the screen are a grey space that is filled with large text saying “Turn on the Radio”. This can be seen here:Turn On Samsung Radio Were there really users who said “Gosh the radio isn’t switched on I wonder what I should do? If only there was a handy text message to tell me!”

      This text is fairly pointless but it doesn’t end there. Once you turn the damn thing on it displays another ‘handy’ text message. Switched on display

      Clearly Samsung think users are incapable of understanding what the frequency display shows below. Or bizarrely there’s a possibility of your radio displaying a frequency below that message that isn’t what you’re actually listening to. These messages also shunt all the other buttons down and obscures your access to favourites etc. You can slide the screen up and remove the message screen from view. However if you rotate the screen it comes back annoyingly. Depressingly Samsung appear to have taken notes from Microsoft.

      A leaner Teams would be excellent as my work Surface tablet quickly runs out of memory when running Teams and a few other programs. Kill off Teams and there’s a lot more space.

    4. TRT

      Re: Basic UX problems

      I know this article is about the Windows client, but as a Mac user I've also suffered the UX pain of Teams. The fact that chat notifications cover the leave meeting button... and the fact that human behaviour is to scrawl "Bye!" and "Thanks!" and "Really useful!!!" in the chat as they leave. In a meeting with a few hundred users it can take 5 to 10 minutes before I'm actually able to leave the meeting gracefully using the leave button rather than force-quitting Teams.

      1. sgp

        Re: Basic UX problems

        Cmd shift H

        1. TRT
          Facepalm

          Re: Basic UX problems

          *ping*

      2. FirstTangoInParis Bronze badge

        Re: Basic UX problems

        Tried using the Linux client a while back. Discovered that the shared slides don’t display. Oh look it’s beta. No this is not beta, it lacks key functionality. How about a health warning at download time, M$?

        1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
          FAIL

          Re: Basic UX problems

          They have solved that problem. Linux client is discontinued, now we're supposed to use the web client, which only works with Edge or Chrome.

      3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Basic UX problems

        Every Microsoft application should recognize a fist pounding on the keyboard as the rage-quit shortcut.

    5. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

      Re: Basic UX problems

      "nice for them to admit for once that many of the frustrations people experience with using Microsoft products are rooted in basic UX problems"

      The ones trying to fix the UI problems are the same ones who produced the current shambles in the first place. They should leave the UI alone, because whatever they will do next won't be better, it will just be equally bad and *different*, which is worse.

      What they should work on is resource usage, connectivity, and search. And just keep working on those until it approaches some level of acceptable.

      But no. Expect more UI changes.

    6. Manolo
      Flame

      Re: Basic UX problems

      The most pointless dialog box in Teams is when I log in.

      A dialog box pops up and asks me if I want to stay signed in.

      Every fekking day I tick the box "Do not ask this again" and click NO.

      And every fekking next day I get the same dialog box again, despite my previous day's choice.

      Is this stupidity or arrogance on M$'s side?

      1. ITMA Silver badge

        Re: Basic UX problems

        Even better....

        If you click on Sign Out in the desktop version of Teams, you can re-launch Teams and sign back in just by clicking on a username in the list - ANY username with NO password prompt.

        W T actual F ?!?!?!?!?

      2. coredump

        Re: Basic UX problems

        Arrogant stupidity, sounds like. Though I'll allow it could also be stupid arrogance.

    7. fajensen
      Flame

      Re: Basic UX problems

      nice for them to admit for once that many of the frustrations people experience with using Microsoft products are rooted in basic UX problems.

      Hah - They are admitting the minor transgression to divert from the bigger, harder, probably unsolvable, problems.

      Work has Office 365. Work want us to use Projectflow. One should think "Oh, well yet another Gannt chart to fiddle with and one can attach "products" to the tasks, which are in The Cloud and there are Ressources to manage and so forth. Only, all of the funtions that one would normally expect in some project management software, they are smeared across Projectflow, Sharepoint, Teams, Tasks and probably some more stuff, that one has to pay, for except we don't. Differnt flows, different look & feel, different naming for the same things .... subtle ways things that appear identical are actually different, like booking a RyanAir ticket without getting dinged for some stupid crap one does not want, only distributed and worse!

      The impression one gets is that the challenge each of the Microsoft Product Teams took away from the product initiation meeting twas: "How can we make those other bastards contribution to our product suck the hardest so that everyone can see what idiots they are?".

      Working in this environment feels like picking rare coins out of clogged highway restroom toilet. The pay is decent, to get the pay, however ....

    8. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Basic UX problems

      God, Teams is such a parade of UX agony. A few off the top of my head:

      - No option to turn off the fucking "turn parenthesized words into goddamned emoji because all users are pathetic idiots who can't express themselves in text".

      - At some point, some idiot decided that all text in a quotation block in chat should be in italics. You can't turn that off. Whoever made that decision should be shot, not just fired.

      - God forbid you accidentally mouse over someone's name or (completely unnecessary) "avatar" image during a meeting, because then Teams will show the stupid user-info popup, which can take several seconds to display and then disappear again, hiding a portion of what just might be useful information.

      - It's been said many times, but: Teams still lacks a decent search function. And that's despite having at least two of them: the Find box, and the Find box when you enter Ctrl-F, which for some reason does a completely different thing.

      - Notifying me every time I go into a chat of who's not around. I don't care, Teams, and if I did, I could find out. As people have ever since computer chat was invented. I do not need you to tattle on my coworkers, or spy on me.

      - Oh, I can't tell Teams not to spy on me.

      - Downloads always go to the default location. There's no option to make it ask me where I want to save downloaded files, as every other damn application manages to do.

      - There's no option to sort the list of Teams you belong to alphabetically. You can rearrange them manually, but only by dragging and dropping, which works poorly and is a huge pain in the ass.

      - Oh, and "Teams" the application manages a bunch of "Teams" objects, which contain "Channels" and "Tabs" and all manner of other crap. It's like someone at Microsoft looked at various information models and said "I don't understand what any of this is for!", then drooled on the keyboard for a year. It's aggressively hostile to any sort of sensible organization. Teams is a librarian's dream of Hell.

      - Some months ago, Teams stopped ringing my laptop's speaker when a call comes in. I've turned the relevant setting on and off again. I've stopped and restarted Teams. I've rebooted (or, more precisely, Microsoft has arbitrarily rebooted for me). No dice. Another painfully simple, obvious, necessary feature broken.

      Teams is the least-competent commercial software I currently use. Maybe that I've ever used.

  5. Buzzword

    Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

    The changes to Threading are really significant, and I don't think you've gone into enough detail here. The chat bar moves to the top (like Facebook); each thread is now like a Facebook post, with comments below it. This will reduce noise like "hello" or "thanks"; and it will be more searchable. Overall this should improve productivity.

    1. LorenDB

      Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

      It looks to me like they merged Yammer into the threads.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

        Why am I reminded of that saying about you can't put two turkeys together to make an eagle?

        1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

          Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

          Probably because, every time you see this Turducken software, you wince?

        2. fajensen
          Pint

          Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

          With some needlework and a trebuchet, you can!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

      Just downloaded it for a try. In typical MS style, to prevent confusion the chats are now new at the bottom and channel messages new at the top.

      It's all much more equitable, now whichever you prefer you won't like it. But that's OK, because the app is faster at switching so they've basically taken the load off the computer and put it onto the user having to context switch.

      It does feel a little faster, however and seems almost imperceptibly lighter on memory.

    3. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Gimp

      Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

      I see Threading and think, oh they've finally gone multithreaded with their shit. Then I realise it's a post from a fanboi… Good luck, gimp!

    4. Trixr

      Re: Teams will be less like WhatsApp, more like Facebook

      Yeah, they're trying to position it to shoehorn Yammer back in, that PoS.

      The UI actually looks better to my eyes (the current one is just shite), and the search is somewhat more responsive.

      BUT, there is still no convenient way to search your own messages (you still have to type "from: [your.full.email]", and even worse, you STILL can't click on a search result and be taken to the message position, if it's more than a couple of "pages" of messages away. Useless.

  6. Piro

    I want one feature

    One Skype had. If I type to find in the search bar, it should be able to filter by department and location.

    In Skype for Business, I could type a department name, or a location (data in AD) and Skype would dutifully filter the list by that, which was unbelievably useful. Can't do that in Teams, which is still an issue to this day, there's no good way to do it.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why are people switching accounts when you can just have two teams open using a browser shortcut?

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Some teams functions (like chat) don't work when you have two tabs open in the browser.

      1. Fred Dibnah

        You could run two different browsers, or one tab in a private window. On FF you could run separate container tabs.

        These are just my suggestions and YMMV. My main suggestion would be to avoid Teams wherever possible.

        1. molletts

          +1 for the Firefox Multi-Account Containers. It's an official add-on from Mozilla; why they don't just build it into the browser, I have no idea. It's probably the biggest of the many reasons I use FF as my main work browser despite being in a "Microsoft shop" - I have to juggle four Office 365 accounts on two different tenants (plus occasionally needing to get a user to log into their account or logging myself into a test account) so it helps to preserve what's left of my sanity.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        They work perfectly when you have one in the app and one in the browser.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    teams another shit idea where data goes to get lost

    considering how shit MS search is in anything.

    Teams is where ideas solutions and useful information goes to get lost.

    Nevermind the amount that bosses are now snooping on you.

  9. gv

    Firefox

    Does it work properly on Firefox yet?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: Firefox

      How about "Does it work properly yet"?

      Can't search text and open the chat it's in with the view positioned over that text but at least it's got hi-five animations. FFS.

    2. Tom Chiverton 1 Silver badge

      Re: Firefox

      Perfectly, yesterday, including sharing another browser window to the call.

      1. Someone Else Silver badge

        Re: Firefox

        Great! It worked yesterday. And the half-life of that functionality remaining viable is...?

  10. LorenDB
    FAIL

    Popouts by default?

    It seems that the new Teams opens chats in a popout window any time you click on a desktop notification, and there's no way to turn that behavior off. Thanks, Microsoft, for giving me the push to stay with the old Teams for now.

    1. hoola Silver badge

      Re: Popouts by default?

      WTF, who can possibly think that is a good idea.

      Teams is supposed to be a business tool which, (one assumes) the default consumption device is a desktop/laptop with a large screen, not a sodding mobile phone.

  11. ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo Silver badge
    Coat

    Forwarding, anybody

    Will Teams be able to forward messages, like in any messaging app, or would this be too innovative?

    --> I must have forwarded something

  12. hoola Silver badge

    Impossible

    Whatever they do it will still be a total pile of shite.

    It is so many bits stuck together to try and make a collaboration tool it is no wonder it is a mess.

    The automated updates appear to bust it with monotonous regularity or worse make it unusable so you have to reboot.

    As for making it more like social Social Media, I would just like the search and such like to behave in a way that any sane person can understand the results.

  13. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    Sourccode

    I saw the sourcecode of the change and it's like this:

    // Sleep(1000);

    SendMessage(message);

    // giggles = malloc(1000*1024);

    //for (int i=0; i<1000*1024) {

    // giggles[i] = sheets[i] * sin(2*M_PI*i/1000);

    // Sleep(1);

    //}

    // TODO: uncomment for the next improved release

    Sleep(100);

    UpdateUI();

    // Free(giggles)

    1. spireite Silver badge

      Re: Sourccode

      There's the giggles.....

      .... where's the shits... oh, Install Complete ...

      .... there it is ...

  14. Someone Else Silver badge

    If the example is any indication...

    ...this "new, improved UI (or "UX", as the kidz now call it) will be every bit as shit as the current one...just different. Which, well...because Micros~1.

    Given that picture, one will have a hard time convincing me that the same set of ADHD-addled "Microsoft Designers" aren't still running the asylum, with the same set of design "rules", which led to the WSH1 that, well, all their current offerings have. Clutter, disorganization, whizzy pictures, and eye strain rulez!

    1 Warm Steaming Heap

    1. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

      Re: If the example is any indication...

      "will be every bit as shit as the current one"

      I think it'll be worse. I'd offer odds but I doubt we'll get anyone willing to cover the "it'll be better" part of that bet.

  15. Tim 11

    up to two times faster performance while using 50 percent less memory

    That's a start - let me know when you've doubled the speed and halved the memory footprint another 3 times and it might be usable

  16. DrSunshine0104

    They should make SharePoint less confusing while they are at it. It feels like a decentralized mess without organization. You need to know arcane incantations to find the right site even if you have access to it. I own several SharePoint sites for project management and if it were not for the bookmark I couldn't find it. It doesn't appear in the organizational search when I look for it, but maybe that is user error.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      This is spot-on. Microsoft (and others) have lost sight (thrown in the towel?) on "navigating", and instead rely on "search".

      Since most of these tools have search functions which are crap, the whole thing is a bogged down clunky cumbersome mess to use.

      It's a pity; because the tools are such useless junk, people have lost all motivation to organize, categorize, sort, file, etc. Just lump it all together wherever, and hope (hah!) you can find it later with the Search box. Good luck with that.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      SharePoint is a premier Information Mismanagement Solution.

  17. Eponymous Bastard
    Flame

    Teams fucks computers

    During the shite era that was lockdown Teams fucked my previous Dell laptop. Every time I was forced into some hideous, pointless seemingly never ending "meeting" with colleagues and my former feckless line manager when the buzzword was "content" the poor machine suffered an asthma attack. My colleagues laughed every time as they could hear it struggling for breath. When it died I got a "newer" Dell which still hyperventilates when doing anything "collaborative" in Teams.

    Teams is just another fucking tool to monitor our "performance".

    Once upon a time there was just Outlook and endless streams of shite into which one was cc'd . . .

    I'll get my aquascutum as it's wet here in the Duchy.

    1. Fred Dibnah

      Re: Teams fucks computers

      Aquascutum, Thatcher's outfit of choice.

      Random pub quiz fact.

  18. John H Woods

    How about...

    ...a "try again" button when Teams, alone amongst your applications, reports that you are not connected to the internet?

    1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: How about...

      My current work machine came without an Ethernet connector (because we're all supposed to be on wireless now). No prob, I thought, I'll just pick up one of those USB-C hubs with the RJ on the end...which I did, and it works great*. I refuse to use Teams without a hardwired network connection.

      * except Windows drops the damn wired connection occasionally

      It seems, from what Google says, to be a problem with the generic USB to Ethernet chip and/or its Windows driver. I have reduced the frequency of occurrence, but have not yet totally eliminated the issue.

      1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
        Big Brother

        Re: How about...

        Same issue, with a USB-C docking station for the big boss here.

        Went through all the USB devices & killed off Windows power saving & not heard a word since. :)

        https://helpdeskgeek.com/wp-content/pictures/2009/09/image_thumb36.png

    2. notyetanotherid

      Re: How about...

      > ...a "try again" button when Teams, alone amongst your applications, reports that you are not connected to the internet?

      And the same in the RSS Connector, which currently just reports an 'unrecoverable error' if it can't pull the data on schedule, forcing the connector to be deleted and re-created to start it working again.

  19. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Windows

    An unpopular opinion

    I rather like Teams, at least in comparison to the competition. Slack looks like a Fisher-Price version of Teams, has fewer features, and basically behaves like someone slapped a layer of paint over an IRC client. Zoom seems to have lost track of the fact that their big appeal was simplicity. Cisco has basically ruined WebEx. I'm not sure what other chat/unified communication applications are out there, but Teams seems more functional than the ones I'm familiar with.

    Downvote away!

    1. Trixr

      Re: An unpopular opinion

      Discord is great. Not perfect, but way better than Teams. Unless you love "quick links" to stupid apps that you can easily reach via the taskbar or quick-launch anyway. And of course Teams is integrated into the Office apps - some people apparently like Sharepoint. I don't. If you want an actual messaging client, rather than a messaging bolt-on to SPO, that's where Discord is powerful.

      Slack is good if it's extended with the tons of add-ons that are available. Remember, Teams' ethos was basically to copy Slack and slap it on top of Sharepoint + Skype/Lync and now jam in Yammer. Also, in Slack, message search actually works - you get the results AND you can click on a message and be taken to the actual position in the thread. Same with Discord, of course.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: An unpopular opinion

      My problem with Teams isn't so much Teams itself -- though I'm admittedly not a fan.

      Rather, it's that Teams seems to have its hooks (or visa versa) into the whole Microsoft Windows desktop applications paradigm. It feels like you can't use one without the other.

      I've used the Teams client for meetings, and it was ... fine. It wasn't as responsive as Zoom on the same hardware and same network, but it was usable. I found the interface to be clunky but I'll concede that was because I was already used to Zoom. Probably.

      But where Teams really shat the bed was trying to use it for, well, pretty much anything outside the local organization or workgroup or whatever. I'm not any sort of Microsoft admin or even a strong Windows desktop user, but e.g. just following instructions and URLs and clicking the obvious things, I wasn't able to join a Teams session with another person at a different partner company on a different network with separate AD etc. The Teams client reported connecting to the Teams host/server, the meeting host claimed they saw my incoming join request, but I never actually got in. Rinse, repeat, fail again.

      By contrast, Zoom didn't mind at all, just carried on. I'm no great fan of Zoom either, but it worked as advertised when Teams did not.

      I guess people outside your AD forest or Sharepoint or ?? aren't allowed to be on your Team?

      1. Julian 8

        Re: An unpopular opinion

        I have this at work, and it is due to mimecast. I have asked for the teams url to be white listed, but nope, not going to. So clicking on the link directly, or from the nice outlook popup window asking me to "Join Online" - never works. Copy & paste into a browser, choose Open teams app from that link and it all works.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: An unpopular opinion

          Hrm, I tried that copy-paste workaround routine too, but same end (non-)result.

          No idea what 'mimecast' is, I'll take your word for it. My first thought was AD membership (e.g. my laptop isn't on the other parties' AD, or any at all for that matter) but as I said, I know little about Windows domain or related things.

          My only other contribution is the same setup used to work, but at some point when I wasn't watching (because, who'd ever want to pay too much attention to Teams?) it simply didn't work any longer. I don't know what specifically changed to cause the breakage -- too many things, and many outside my view or control, to track down.

    3. Duke of Source

      Re: An unpopular opinion

      Matrix FTW. They also got a hosted offering at element.io if you like that.

    4. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: An unpopular opinion

      Frankly, I rarely find that having more features is an improvement over the competition.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: An unpopular opinion

      >Slack looks like a Fisher-Price version of Teams, has fewer features, and basically behaves like someone slapped a layer of paint over an IRC client

      That's 100% irrelevant as it works: The *first* essential part of any software. If it was actual IRC client, it would, not only work, but be *fast* too. I should know, I've an actual IRC client running in other window. That hasn't crashed in last 15 years, not once. That's how it *should* be.

      Teams is a pile of shit which gets reshuffled every few months and it's *still* pile of shit. Slack is just a poor IRC client with multimedia, which doesn't work at all if you're running Firefox, obviously on purpose as the company people are asshats and they won't fix it.

      All of these try to re-invent IRC and *fail*. Which tells all of them are morons. Call Oikarinen back.

  20. MOH

    On my crappy work laptop with minimal RAM which started struggling regularly, Teams would be the first thing I'd nuke on a near-daily basis. The amount it uses while supposedly just sitting in the background is ludicrous

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I'm the opposite

      It's basically the only application my company use and my company laptop is new, shiny and very fast. But when "working from 'Home'" I need to sometimes access it from less capable devices. Being online all the time is fine from my company mobile, not for any fast work where I need to edit a document so I have Teams and use MS365 in a browser from either an old, slow, tablet or an older but not so slow laptop.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I have a great idea for a feature they might want to add ...

    How about the ability to actually join a meeting ?

    OK, there may be some issues down to our organisation's implementation (hint, we don't use public cloud on security grounds), but it seems that every time I try to join a meeting it sits there for a couple of minutes and eventually says (helpfully, like I hadn't worked it out) "there was a problem, please try again". It's not my laptop, others have the same problem - some saying they join meetings 15 minutes early to allow for it ! Clearly something somewhere can't cope with big numbers of users, like say 20 people in a meeting.

  22. arctic_haze

    I refuse to use Teams on my laptop

    I use it on my Android phones if someone sends me an invitation to a Teams meeting. Because I have no Microsoft account, I usually manage to join the meeting only after the fifth attempt on the second phone I try it (the older one). But I'm not surprised because it is a Microsoft product.

  23. OttoMashun

    In Windows 3.0 days, the standard joke about Microsoft's GUI's was: The standard programming paradigm has been, Make [the code] work; make it fast; make it pretty. You know, form follows functionality and all that good stuff. But Microsoft decided to blaze new ground, and they upended that paradigm, turning it into: Make it pretty; make it fast; then try to make the damned thing work. And that has been the cornerstone of Microsoft's approach to GUI code ever since.

    1. PeteA

      Make it fast?

      Hmm, I know about the other parts of the approach, but don't remember that bit. Don't think anyone could accuse Windows 3 of being fast. Or Windows 95. Or 98, millenium edition, NT, 2000, 7, 8 or 10 really. Haven't had the misfortune of having to use 11 yet, but I'm sure it's coming.

      1. Korev Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: Make it fast?

        I remember my uni ran Win3.11 on some 450(?)MHz Pentiums IIs for a bit, the loading screen popped up for than a second. They got a lot slower once they'd got NT4 on them...

      2. Denarius Silver badge

        Re: Make it fast?

        Really ? On 486 I could get Win3.1 up in seconds. On pentiums Win95-98 up in tens of seconds. Win2000 not to bad, under a minute.

        XP and suckseccors (sic) culminating in the CPU sucking RAM ripping Win10 that can make an i7 with 8 Gb RAM wheeze like Win3.x on a 386 with 2 MB of RAM. To be fair, Linux is approaching the same nadir. The BSDs I will have to try again and if the BEOs resurrection projects succeed, I will try them if the Outlook and Ofice equivalents works..

        Even then OfficeLibre is looking like the vile Ribbon has attached itself. Getting hard to do anything in scalc as it also has become a desktop publisher or juvenile Presentation maker..

        Cant all of them just leave what works alone!!

        To get work done, am seriously thinking of setting up Linux 3.x , Win98 or XP in a standalone machine with old OfficeLibre, Kingsoft or Office and move files via USB to network connected machine for distribution. The corporate support and coding done in FOSS is making software more like the bloated code from M$ we love to hate.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Make it fast?

          You want fast? Try XP, word 2.0 and excel 4.0 in a VM on top of linux wit current hardware. Downside? No even near current browsers available.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Make it fast?

        > Don't think anyone could accuse Windows 3 of being fast.

        It was fast when you had one or two generations newer hardware, say 66MHz 486. That didn't take many years. XP is very fast on modern(ish) hardware.

        Of course MS f**ing with boot system made running it really difficult: That wasn't an accident.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Maybe if they ever manage to make something pretty they'll get to stage two.

  24. Dropper

    That's Cool

    Always best to change something for the sake of changing it. Nothing bad ever happens when you do this.

  25. DrXym

    Horrible software

    Teams is functional but it's not usable, at least not at scale. It's like it was written as an MS Office bonus feature but COVID hit and Microsoft went all in trying to patch and shore up this incomplete thing as the solution for conferencing and remote work.

    The whole UI feels clumsy, like it's a glorified Web 2.0 app. It doesn't feel native, compact or responsive - just switching channels or tabs incurs a noticeable delay. The UI is a maze to navigate. The planner / calendar doesn't work the same way as Outlook despite consuming the same data. It doesn't work like (the equally shitty) Sharepoint despite consuming the same data. Links can be broken by default browser settings. Even simple meat & potatoes things like reliably playing audio notifications / reminders often just breaks. Why did it play a notification a minute ago, but neglected to do anything this time? Don't know. It doesn't feel like it was designed for people who might want to be doing multiple things at the same time or who are swamped with channels of corporate crap.

    So if they improve the experience then great. I'm stuck with Teams and it really does an overhaul. Give me something that works like a desktop app, is designed for multitasking and is actually reliable.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To make things less confusing, please end the paradigm of share point/onedrive/teams and search for everything.

    Organisations suckered into this system have a heap of loss-of-data problems in the near future, particularly where they have also ditched conventional shared drives.

    Speaking from experience.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Got it in one.

      Today's shenanigans with Microsoft "integrating" all their desktop productivity(-killer) apps, sharepoint, teams, onedrive, whatever, is somewhat reminiscent of "bundling" the IE browser with Windows itself way back when.

      Both seem wholly unnecessary, and probably intended to squeeze out possible competitors.

  27. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
    Devil

    Teams is now "twice as fast while using half the system resources"

    Anyone who believes that, please text me - I can do you an awesome deal on a bridge - slightly used, going cheap.

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      I believe that Teams will use half of my system's resources.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kudos to MSFT

    For creating another Lotus Bloats! The parent company that owns us is all PCs and our European divisions are all Mac. Teams on a Mac is a godawful app, bloatware, buggy, and it just feels like a bastard stepchild no one wants.

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: Kudos to MSFT

      Teams on a Mac is a godawful app, bloatware, buggy, and it just feels like a bastard stepchild no one wants.
      The version of Teams running in Windows is little different.

  29. Ascy

    New Version: Still Rubbish

    Sadly the new version is still a half-baked bag of spanners. 'Chat' and 'Teams' are still separated, meaning that you are likely to miss messages in one or the other (I generally stay on chat and ignore teams). Also, you go to a chat, the scrollbar changes whilst the chat history is loaded. You go away from the chat and then back to the chat again and the whole chat history loading starts again. It's like someone is learning to write their very first desktop application.

    Then there are the other issues which I'm pretty sure won't be fixed (haven't used it long enough to check):

    - Multiple people on a video call requiring a dev spec machine (try having a video call with 3 people on a 'mobile' processor Core i5 laptop and then try opening a Word document at the same time - about a minute later, you may get to see your document).

    - Interruptions: sometimes I just want to get on and work without popups, flashing taskbars, or the taskbar icon highlighted red. Teams is always like 'Hey, you, hey, hey, hey, hey' when 99% of the messages don't require an immediate response. Take away Teams and similar apps and I'd bet you'd see a massive productivity boost. The only way completely stop the interuptions in Teams (without Outlook randomly scheduling you focus time) is to use the browser version of Teams and not enable desktop notifications (even DND mode doesn't properly work).

    - Sometimes drag and drop of images into a chat works and other times it doesn't.

    Teams was such a mess and is still such a mess.

  30. T. F. M. Reader

    "while using half the system resources"

    What's new? Teams has always used at least half the system resources.

  31. Rich 2 Silver badge

    All the beat statistics are made up

    “ On average, a typical user switches ten thousand times per month”

    Assuming an 8 hour day, I make that to be over 40 times an hour. How the hell would anyone get any actual work done at that rate???

    Utter utter bollox

  32. Duffaboy
    Thumb Down

    I hate teams

    There that feels better, got that off my chest

  33. 43300 Silver badge

    For anyone who hasn't clicked the links in the article, I draw your attention to this one: https://medium.com/microsoft-design/designing-the-new-era-of-teams-523d772add4

    In particular the section entitled 'More expressive' which is a particularly fine example of highly-concentrated bullshit!

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Oh hell, that's awful. So much of the fluff in that page is anti-usability and contrary to decades old established user interface design principles.

  34. DazSalt

    A tale of two Teams

    Never mind fixing the UI/X and improving performance. How about just one version of the Teams client app?

    After Microsoft (finally) saw the light and produced a single version of Onedrive for both personal and business use (features based on login type), the teams behind Teams have now given us “Teams” and “Teams for work and school”.

    We had no idea there were two versions until a couple of weeks ago. Calls from clients saying they couldn’t log in, or they logged in but couldn’t see their calendar.

    Turns out Teams will merrily install both versions, or the personal version, and helpfully they are both in your app list displayed just as “Microsoft Teams”.

    For those who find themselves with this problem, at present, the Work/School version client is slightly larger and the almost identical app icon has a blue background on the home version.

    Add to this confusion by now having OEM’s shipping business-grade laptops (you know, the ones with Windows Pro) with the home version of the Teams client installed.

    Please MS, sort this s**t out. I think I can manage during sign-in to choose “Work or School”. Not choose from two almost identical icons first thing in the morning.

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: A tale of two Teams

      Don't worry, you can add Teams Basic and Teams Premium to the mess for the additional later pain of hell and unnecessary complexity.

      1. 43300 Silver badge

        Re: A tale of two Teams

        Don't forget the 'add-on' services too - some of which already exist (e.g. the one for adding PBX functionality).

  35. HammerOn1024

    Now, If They Woud Just...

    Stop locking up my audio system every time I run this POS, that would be nice. And also NOT loose my login account every day, that would truly be awesome!

    I despise and loath this POS product.

  36. TRT

    I understand they are also renaming Yammer...

    to something that takes far longer to say.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I understand they are also renaming Yammer...

      I already use several multiple-syllable words preceding "yammer", so no great harm done.

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