You will like it after a few months they said… I do not. Despite being around for a while it has some core missing features, has some pretty bad bags, usability problems which all lead to overall lower productivity but even worse it has eroded many aspects of our team culture.
Core Missing Features
There’s really no excuse for this one, Come on Microsoft Design you can do better.
- You cannot @ someone that you are not chatting with
In teams you cannot @ someone who isn’t in the current conversation… Microsoft, why would you have shipped without this? In a single day I refer people to other people 10–30 times. Without the ability to @ people it takes about 3 extra minutes which wastes about an hour of my time every day. Across all the companies using Teams hundreds of hours are being lost because of this missing feature.
1.2 You can’t copy a message with @’s (and have the @’s work)
2. Private channel membership doesn’t work with distribution lists
Membership to private channels is by direct invite, which means when someone new joins the team we have to add them manually to all the right private channels. This is frustrating Teams knows our org chart, has tags, can connect with security groups and distribution list but literally none of these can be used to set the membership to a private channel.
3. You can’t add people to public channels
Discoverability is a huge problem in Teams. Because you can’t add people to public channels there is no way to direct people’s attention to what is most important. As a manager this is really frustrating, I constantly have to send people links to channels and bug them to join. It is hard to find the channels I need to pay attention to.
Bugs
So many bug… but some feel big enough that shame bells should be involved.
- Performance
Nothing turns a mac book pro into a helicopter quite like teams. For no rhyme or reason, teams meetings sometimes kick my fan into the 9th degree. I have tried closing everything other than teams. And it doesn’t help that the fan in teams sounds like an army of angry crickets.
2. Internet Connection
Sometimes teams breaks my internet… I like my internet. The call will continue just fine but I can’t browse any websites or share files from Sharepoint. My connection is fine on other devices, and fixes itself as soon as I leave the call.
3. Left and right arrow keys?
You don’t realize how much you use the left and right arrow keys until they don’t work. I thought my keyboard was broken but no the arrow keys work in every other app. The solution it turns out is to t̶h̶r̶o̶w̶ ̶T̶e̶a̶m̶s̶ restart your entire computer.
You can’t make the shit up. More than 1800 people asked this same question and it still isn’t fixed.
Left & right arrow keys don't move the cursor (in teams)
4. The mobile app and desktop app don’t sync
If you message people in the mobile app they do not show up in Teams unless you close and reopen teams.
*Shakes head*
Bad UI
*clears throat*, I feel like Microsoft did lots of focus groups and user studies and then ignored all the feedback they received.
- Have two entirely different ways for people to chat within teams. Because we all want more divergent ways to communicate.
Did I send this person a chat or post it in a channel? Why teams? Why? This makes pretty much everything about teams twice as hard, it’s twice as hard to see what I need to respond to, twice as hard to find things…
2. The search more or less doesn’t work
3. I could go on but the first thing is so bad Its not even worth it :(
Eroding team culture
And now we come to the worse part of all. Teams discourages fun and calibration.
Teams gives you so few emoji’s and options for expressing yourself that people just don’t bother. Conversations are business 24/7. This makes me cry inside but I have no way to share this on teams.
- Everyone talks less
After switching to teams the chat volume is way lower. Now this does maybe lead to less distraction, messages are fewer and more to the point. That’s a good thing right? Except people are no longer building relationships with each other.
2. Social teams and channels just don’t work
For whatever reason all attempts to make social groups fail, it just rubs against the fabric teams is made of. I used to have a place to talk about space and a place for sharing artwork, and laughter, I remember there being laughter. :(
Conclusion
If no one was working remotely then I am sure maybe teams would be ok. But with so many people working from home I think teams will cost more than you bargain for. But I don’t know maybe you want a frustrated unproductive workforce.
The more I think about teams the more I wonder what lowers work place productivity more, Teams or Twitter?
Use Teams they said… was originally published in CodeX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.