This is gonna sound like a troll post but i assure you it is not.
I don’t have a coding background but I’ve used Teams in a lot of workplaces and really only encountered like 2 issues entirely.
Either I got seriously lucky or it was before enshittification.
Why do you yourself dislike it? Is it UI? Performance?
I should also say I use Teams for basic purposes like messaging and uploading files, I literally don’t touch anything else and performance hadn’t been an issue. (Likely because I’ve been given thicc-ass workstations in the past)
I suspect the answer by a great many people will boil down to “because I used it [and it’s shit]”
Mobile notifications are a joke. When I’m not working I want to hear from one single emergency channel, it’s my time, not work’s. But even with all itifs but that one channel set I get pinged for every single reply in every team
Fucking this so much.
There’s an outage but it’s not my week. How about I only get notified if someone tags me instead of getting 50 notifications in the middle of the night that have nothing to do with me??
Recently, it seems that whenever I go on lunch, that is when people decide to start spamming the group chats. Really fun trying to watch a video or listen to music on my phone and have to be spammed with those notifications.
And the best I can do, as far as I know on my iPhone, is to swipe the notification and block for an hour or block for the day. But there lies the problem…if someone needs to ping me, then I miss out on that notification…
My workplace used g suite then got acquired and spent six painful as fuck months transitioning to SharePoint and teams.
Half the shit in teams doesn’t work and I’m still bitter about wasting time transitioning. My favorite three current issues.
From the SharePoint homepage there’s a nice little search bar, you can type in your query and get literal garbage back. If you click “search more” to get it to stop being a modal window then the search results are accurate - Teams does this shit all the time… stuff that should be the same everywhere is just randomly implemented differently on different pages.
I currently have a little error bar in Teams - it says the web view version of edge is incorrect for this version of teams. If I click it (and there’s little motivation for me to do so since everything seems to be working) then it opens a pane to a web page, redirects half a dozen times, then lands on a page that says “You already have this version installed”. The next time I open teams the error is back.
If someone links to a SharePoint document in a teams chat I’ll often get a “You need to be signed in” link unfurling and hovering over the link yields the same message. If I click on the link it’ll realize I’m signed in and stop showing that error for a while. Please bear in mind that my teams account and SharePoint account are theoretically the same account. I have the same username and password to enter into both services and can’t update information for them independently… if on Microsofts backend if they’re technically different accounts then I, as the user, should never fucking know that. Fix your shit.
Bonus one for privacy. If you’re in a meeting and muted Teams still demands mic access. If you haven’t unplugged your mic or triggered a hardwareish switch then Microsoft is still listening to you… services usually keep listening so that’s not super different. But Microsoft actually exposes that it’s still listening! If you or someone else has auto-captioning turned on then the autocaptions may capture and transcribe your speech when you’re muted.
I was very amused to read about my coworker watching an oblivion lore video when we broke for lunch in a day long meeting last week.
Teams just fucking sucks at everything, there’s nothing they do that most of their competitors all do at least as good.
For the web view one, I was told by IT that it was my fault I’d updated Teams, they had to go into windows add remove programs and update edge web view manually… but I have no recollection of this …and even theoretically if I did, how does an entirely ms stack get into this state except through Teams being a shitty citizen
How dare you update a self updating web wrapper!
For the mic mute issue, I guess it’s so they can show a little popup saying you are muted when they detect a signal coming in
That’s likely correct… or they just want more training data.
Doubt they have fixed the issues, even if they have, don’t tell me because I don’t care, I will still hate them.
Because clicking on a link on mobile does not always work for whatever reason so I have to manually type in the stuff.
Because it does not work on my computer.
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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.
So, I really don’t like Teams. What follows is basically an unedited stream-of-consciousness that just came out after reading the question. After reading it, I 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-chromefor 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.
My company dropped Slack for Teams, because it’s free with the Office subscription, so I guess they put a price on collaboration and culture. Weeks on none of the bots and integrations work properly because there’s no time to fix shit that was already working.
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"
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.
Startup on boot:
In Windows: cool and normal
In Linux: who the hell do you think you are?!
And I love it. Going Linux helps to focus on what you actually need, and adds so much to the peace of mind.
I’ve never thought about that but you’re right. I basically never have anything launch at boot. I reboot my system so seldom that who cares, but I mean.
Why is teams terrible?
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Why can I see multiple calendars in outlook but only see my calendar in teams? How does that make it useful to schedule team meetings?
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Why are updates always available even though I just updated?
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Why can I only pin one post in a group chat?
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Why does teams always use its own audio settings over the system settings?
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Why haven’t they implemented proper push to talk?
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Why is it that every few updates one of my meeting members randomly gets muted?
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Why does “Meet Now” basically accomplish what a group call does but the notifications don’t really go out?
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Why do I need to”Apps” in my teams?
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After my call hangs up because the phone app is having issues, how come the other person could still see and hear me?
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Why do you assume I want to use onedrive?
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Why can’t my favorites also appear in chats in a chronological order?
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Why is @everyone even a feature? This isn’t discord.
Heads up, you can see multiple calendars at the same time. The apps thing is interesting because you can embed things like PBI dashboards into a channel, making it easy for everyone to access. It is possible that the configuration at your work is preventing these things. But even when properly configured, everything is just 16 easy clicks away. Ugg.
I guess there is an update I’m missing
It is like a quest I’m on with MS to let them know that poor configuration is the number one impediment to their products. Users can’t tell the difference and assume it is always MS, when it is only them a portion of the time. 😉
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You can see other people’s calendars in Teams, just click “schedule meeting” and use the scheduling assistant just like you would in outlook. If you’re looking at calendars manually before booking meetings you’re doing it wrong to start with.
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They aren’t.
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To prevent stupid people pinning so many messages that the feature becomes useless.
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Because the system settings are usually not what you want, most people don’t leave their headset on all day and only pick it up for calls.
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What’s wrong with Ctrl+Spacebar? I use it all the time
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Why are updates happening during your meetings? How would that even work?
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I’ll agree with this one, meet now isn’t useful. Just call the person.
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Because teams is a Communications AND Collaboration tool, if you’re only using it for communication you’re clearly haven’t taken any sort of training on how to use it properly or you’d be using the apps all the time.
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Never had this happen
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I agree with this one, I hate OneDrive, it’s bad data governance. Everything should live in a shared space at work.
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If you have so many favorites that it’s an issue, you’re doing it wrong. See #3.
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Because some types of organizations use this frequently, just because a feature doesn’t apply to your work situation doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to others.
Nah - its because you just dont understand how people work
I understand how people work, managers skimp on training because they think their users will understand without it, and users gripe about software because they didn’t get said training.
Expecting user training is not a stretch for software. Nobody expects you to know how pivot tables or formulas work in Excel without having received training at some point, but for some reason managers don’t expect the same from Teams’ features.
Why would I need training for a chat app ?
I have (as many many others) have used other apps before with no training at all without issues. Teams requires it because its UX is atrociousBecause it’s not a chat app. It’s a communications and collaboration platform. It has chat in it, but it also contains a significant amount of other functionality that you clearly aren’t even aware of.
People don’t even know what they don’t know about this app.
It’s like consider a full RV as a “car”, sure it can get you from a to b, but that’s not really it’s intended use case and you’re going to have a bad time if you’re trying to use it to drop your kids off at school every day. If you know how to drive a car, you’re probably still going to need extra training to both drive and use the features of the RV properly too.
Except the entire use case for teams in our organization (and I’m sure many others) is basically just to chat and make calls. None of the extra stuff is useful to us.
Also you can look at slack which would also be a communications/collaboration platform, and weirdly enough the UX is fine and usable without training. Just admit MS shat the bed and made some Frankenstein abomination that no one knows how to use correctly. It’s pretty typical of Microsoft (and apple too) to just deflect that the user is doing it wrong instead of admitting they could improve the experience.
To add to your RV analogy, Microsoft is selling an RV to moms and dads that just want to drop their kids to school. Sure sometimes they go on vacation and the RV is nice, but it’s not what the user needs. It’s also exactly why users hate it, they are given a monster truck just to go to the shop. (Plus in the case of software, they could have it transform as needed. The communication part could look like a regular sedan, but instead you are forced into the RV format at all times)Slack and Teams are not the same, Slack is a communications app, not a collaboration app.
I know how to use Teams properly, and I have entire departments (government, universities, etc) that I have trained to use it and they get mad every time their IT departments try to introduce a new product that Teams (and M365) already handle just fine.
Mom and Dad didn’t do their fucking research before buying it and didn’t bother to read the fucking manual after they did buy it.
Don’t tell me the average user is correct when I get called into help offices multiple times a year that are still using Excel sheets to manage their vacation requests, manage their tasks on a blackboard on the wall of the office (even though they’re half remote), build their HR forms in Adobe, and have network drives with 90,000 files in 20,000 folders where nobody can find anything all while already owning M365 licenses.
People aren’t using Teams’ integrated collaboration features properly, and it’s not because they’re worse than their existing processes and they have some sort of magic ultra-efficient system already, it’s because they simply do not know how to use them properly.
No matter the amount of training you give me, teams is a shit application and a time sink.
- chat sucks
- navigation sucks
- search sucks
- the calendar sucks
- the-run-all-your-apps-in-teams suck
Its lync merged with sharepoint, created in javascript.
I’ve yet to meet anyone that can show ROI on going teams.
Then you haven’t met an entire team that had proper training on how to use it.
I don’t mean a 1 hour lunch and learn.
This comment chain is the perfect encapsulation of a regular user vs an IT person with no people skills
I can’t tell which is supposed to be which
I’m having trouble logging in can you give me a hand?
Neither can i.
I lied - i’m an it person and i’m far better at it than people.
Found the Teams developer!
Nope I just use it every day in the standard office environment for which it was specifically intended.
To prevent stupid people pinning so many messages that the feature becomes useless.
Because the system settings are usually not what you want, most people don’t leave their headset on all day and only pick it up for calls.
“Teams knows best!”
Teams in in use by a few hundred million users, and most of them don’t complain about them. So maybe they do know best.
Every time we have to join the Teams call of another company, every one of my colleagues (in a GSuite company) complains how bad Teams is at doing calls. Isn’t it supposed to be a tool for doing calls?
No, it’s not.
Teams is a Communications and Collaboration tool, not strictly a communications tool. It makes certain tradeoffs in order to optimize it for it’s intended use case.
So that’s why it’s much worse than Google Meet at doing the one thing I need to use it for.
Interesting choice by Microsoft to make everyone who isn’t using the entire suite think they’re just terrible at the job you expect from them.
Anyone who has a software license for Teams has their entire suite, and Microsoft doesn’t market enterprise products to end users.
- I have literally three people on my team. It is more efficient to have three people’s calendars up and just create a meeting for the open space. Why would I do something that is LESS efficient because that’s how teams wants me to work?
- I’m glad that you can agree that there aren’t always updates. Could you pleaes explain why, then, there has been an “Updates available” button on my teams for three weeks even after I press it?
- OK. There are again, three people on my team. Also, maybe don’t form chats with stupid people?
- Nobody in my organization uses a headset. Ever. We use bluetooth headphones.
- Because i’d like to set my own shortcut like literally every other voice application?
- There are not updates in my meeting. Every few updates of the application, when I am on a call with team members, someone randomly gets muted through no action of anyone in the call.
- I’ve tried to use the collabration tools. They aren’t that useful. OneNote is more useful. I understand if you are forced to use it because you don’t have more efficient methods of collaboration. But I do. So, again, why would I choose a less efficient way of collaboration?
- Yes, it’s a bug.
- Why do you think I have too many favorites? I have 5.
- The exact opposite arguement can be used for so many of your replies.
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- Why is the agenda of a meeting not visible in the mini-view of the meeting. Why do I need to click into the meeting details to see the agenda (which is often just a SharePoint link for most meetings).
I think the calendar thing recently changed. It is now very similar to Outlook
Sorry for hijacking this, I have a similar issue. When you say similar to outlook, is there a way to see shared (group?) calendars in teams like in outlook? I feel very stupid for not finding this.
Yes, I just got the notification like yesterday or so and now I have the same list of calendars on the left side as I have it in Outlook. Maybe it still needs to roll out for you
That would be amazing timing, this use case came up a few days ago. I’ll check if there is an update, thanks for the info
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- I have a Linux laptop that Microsoft apps seem to hate. Both Skype and teams refuse to let me share my screen (both app and web version)
- The teams app kept putting itself on startup and I had to change folder permissions to make it stop
- The whole click on link to open app thing that doesn’t always work
- I’m current having issues with showing calendars but that could be on me
I know we like to hate on Google here but Google Meet is much better imo.
When I first got to try it the chat didn’t work. But it had a meme generator built in. So that’s what I had to use for a while to send chat messages
Hey, wanna try the New Calendar? Tries the new calendar, it is even worse than the current one. Hey, wanna try the New Calendar? STFU Teams, I need to work!
Did you mean New Teams? Or Classic Teams? Do you want to Keep Using New Teams? Do you want to try Classic Teams? You opened New Teams last time, do you want to use that one or Classic Teams? Not to be confused with Teams (for work or school), which is just New Teams! I think!
Why don’t you want to use the new Teams? Give us your feedback so we can ignore it.
Thank you for your feedback. Say, do you know there’s a new Teams available? Try it now!
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:
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.
Microsoft is awful at that… and that’s why my windows machines are all on 10 - for some reason (to general objections) Windows 11 doesn’t let you dock the Taskbar to the side of the screen. I usually use two monitor setup for working and I demand the right to lock the Taskbar on the border between my two screens.
Also, they’re bundling AI slop into everyone and nobody likes any of it.
