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back to article Microsoft's Slack-slapping 'Teams' slips into Office 365

Microsoft's formally launched Teams, its messaging-centric collaboration tool for Office 365. Redmond revealed Teams last November and at the time we remarked upon its uncanny resemblance to Unicorn-grade collaborationware Slack. Our very own Adam Fowler later opined that Slack and Teams “will likely entice two different …

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  1. macjules
    Megaphone

    And what about Skype?

    The shame of this is that Microsoft already have what could be the very best collaboration tool available: Skype. I did start out using Flowdock, also tried HipChat and rejected it the same day and we use Slack extensively, but none of those really come with good conversation or f2f tools in the way that Skype does. We use Slack with Zoom (try Zoom with more than 20 team videos connections ... or don't), but what would be fantastic would be Skype for Business with Slack-style integration for Teams.

    Then again who am I kidding? This is Microsoft we are talking about, a company where 'innovation' means 'how much of our cash reserves can we plough into yet another failed venture?'

    5 3 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And what about Skype?

      Skype got ruined and bloated since it was acquired by Microsoft several years ago.

      And it got worse when Microsoft decided to merge MSN (Windows Live Messenger) with Skype and cancelled the former.

      0 0 Reply
  2. James 51

    Another pointless tool on top of Skype. When are we suppose to get some work done?

    7 2 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Please just email me.

    10 0 Reply
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So there's Teams, SharePoint, Skype and Yammer.

    I don't need all four.

    6 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Saw Yammer introduced at a client site couple of years back. All the staff used Facebook Messenger to complain to each other about how annoying Yammer was .....

      3 0 Reply
    2. Triggerfish
      Reply Icon

      So there's Teams, SharePoint, Skype and Yammer.

      I don't need all four.

      Agreed make one, intergrate it properly into all the core services you get from Office 365, concentrate on doing that one system properly.

      Oh and write some bloody proper user guides and update them everytime you do another interface upgrade ffs.

      3 0 Reply
    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      That isn't the idea

      The idea for Office 365 and its components such as Teams, Yammer, Skype SharePoint isn't necessarily to use them all.

      The idea is for the same data and people to be available across many different services and interfaces. It is then the customers choice which of these systems they use to access said data.

      0 0 Reply
      1. Triggerfish
        Reply Icon

        Re: That isn't the idea

        Yeah but it thens means they tend to be half assed sometimes, or there is to much proliferation, why not one system you can snap in functionality or reduce as needed for your case.

        And with all these being there it becomes a mess, for example we are looking at staffhub at the moment, which even though doesn't seem to want to link up with sharepoint, insist on creating a sharepoint group which has no other interaction with staffhub. You can save files on staffhub, but they wont be saved in the groups section of sharepoint, just somewhere else..

        It just makes it messy, and you spend half your time assessing whether something is useful or not. Should we use teams, should we use team sites, should we use groups, should we use any?

        Each of these little things means a user saves to them they shove files somewhere on one drive, and for an easy to admin system it makes it way more complicated than need be, don't know where a small business owner starting out would end up.

        0 0 Reply
  5. Ilsa Loving

    Cave Johnson here...

    So apparently Cave Johnson is now running Microsoft's chat division, cause they seem to be just cranking out one new chat system after another, throwing them against the wall and seeing what sticks.

    3 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cave Johnson here...

      Nice! I'd wager they're all the same engine under the hood, with varying degrees of front ends bolted on at the last minute by teams of donut eating developers just trying to make it through the quarter without being bothered.

      Here's my Teams issue, other than the obligatory "not another chat system for work!":

      Linux devops, contractor, could have a Mac, but will use the Dell to save my employer a few bucks and just run my junk in a nice CentOS VM. So, we have Outlook installed on my Win7 Dell, check. We have Skype, check. We have Slack, check. We just got Teams, check. And now we're looking at O365 migration, and now Teams is on there, check. Out of all that, only Slack seems like a sane solution to watch what's going on. The rest of this is wildly unnecessary for most needs, and no one uses the video chatting on anything unless you prop up an astonishingly expensive video chat system from Cisco, or those other guys, in the conference room. No one who is even slightly sane video chats from their desk. Even teens don't bother to FaceTime each other, they just snapchap and text.

      Teams, the desktop app is HIGHLY UNSTABLE and would constantly update itself throughout the day, even when I shut it off. It was uninstalled because of this. So, I guess I'll hang out in the Teams O365 to see if the other two people in my group who are two cubes away from me will "chat me up" on this new service no one asked for. Why bother when there are too many solutions to a problem that email already fixed in the 1980s. FFS! And I do NOT mean Female, Female, Shark!

      Innovation: "Hey look, I reinvented the wheel and added sparkles and GIFs and O365 Team integration!"

      1 1 Reply
  6. razorfishsl

    They have started their shit again, where they attempt to eradicate osx from the business work space.

    Skype for business on OSX WILL NOT communicate with any outside skype application not within the business domain.

    Strangely the windows version has functionality to add contacts to external skype users.

    This and the continual Nazi Jackboot like behavior of dictating to IT admins what services are turned on by default, clearly shows that microsoft are intent on resurrecting their old habits.

    0 1 Reply
  7. Alistair
    Windows

    O365 S4B eventually eats 7Gb of ram on my windows VM. (less than 8 hours)

    pidgin-sipe to connect to S4B (its a pain to get working, but getting easier). Runs for days and days through VPN up/down - never more than 700Mb.

    I've recently been head down on a single project. As far as anyone other than my immediate manager or my MD and SD is concerned I'm not online. 25TB of data to move. Manually. Between a 15 year old system and a 2 year old system. Over 2 LAGged 1Gb copper links. And Corporate Legal needs a per file checksum of the copies. YAY!

    So - MS -take your collaboration tools and... <insert flushing noises here>

    0 0 Reply

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