Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is anyone using Microsoft Teams?

53 pointstuyguntn54 comments

We are considering moving from Slack to Microsoft Teams, if anyone is using it here, can you share your experience with it?

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Microsoft is smart to build their own Outlook killer, and they certainly succeeded in freaking Slack out[1]. We (SpiderOak) evaluated teams as competitive research when building Semaphor [2] (our own end-to-end encrypted alternative to Slack/HipChat.)

I found Teams to be a credible offering. It's shortcomings are mostly about being very new (e.g. no linux client yet, some unpolished UI associated with window resizing.) The O365 integration is nice. The client seems to be built using Electron and TypeScript, and if the pace of development maintains I expect it will be a serious threat to Slack. Of course Slack and Teams require trusting the vendor with your unencrypted content.

[1] https://spideroak.com/articles/slacks-morning-after

[2] https://spideroak.com/solutions/semaphor/business/tour

Did you look at Mattermost?

Wow, what a negative, condescending article.

I first thought this was a flip comment and then read the article so I could laugh at mdekkers. I was the dumb one: spideroak's article actually is amazingly condescending.

For context: it's in response to Slack putting a very condescending 1 page ad in the NYT addressed to Microsoft.

http://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/theres-a-major-problem-with...

We're using it. It is bad. Company just started to introduce Salck, MS announced this thing and we had to jump ship because everything they deliver is considered flawless in certain circles.

The mobile app is crap. There's no Linux client. No 3rd party integration that I've seen so far. Lots of bugs and I highly doubt that this project will move/improve at a VS Code level. A beta for your corporate communication needs.

The only upside? It might replace "Skype for Business" which is worse than almost anything else.

Sorry for the rant, but this is a very active issue in my day to day business right now. If I could, I'd stay the hell away from Teams.

You do know it is still in preview right?

Also I use the web client and it works for me, although have to agree it would be nice if the mobile app had access to some of the tabbed content. What else is wrong with the mobile app from your perspective?

Finally, here is the API reference if you want to look at it: https://dev.office.com/microsoft-teams

I am looking forward to when they integrate Flow with Teams. That could make things interesting, given all the 3rd party apps that Flow supports now.

I know that it is in preview, which is why I'm so upset about the idea of adopting it at this point. Seriously: I'm ranting about this product because it is unfinished and unpolished, but obviously the blame for adopting this thing lies in this company. I wouldn't criticize it that much if I'd be able to watch the painful first steps as a bystander..

You use the web client? I assume you mean teams.microsoft.com? The URL that I see nowhere in my notifications etc? Every notification mail links to a landing page that wants me to download a "native" client (even if none exists for the platform I'm on). Notifications also never include any details: They say "Look, you missed stuff on our service. Come back!" instead of actually.. providing any information. The web client has quite some bugs, a fun one is opening a document (which embeds a 365 viewer, I guess) and resizing the window. Last I checked the document view cannot grow. Lots and lots of issues like that.

That API site? Yes, I've seen that. I think last time I checked you had to submit your stuff to let MS decide if it'll be part of a non-existent future "app store" thing. At least for Office365 hosted instances?

MS Teams is in preview for now. I can tell you they are actively reaching out to Slack app developers to port their integrations to MS Teams in anticipation for the GA launch. I hope they solve the bugs, UI and mobile client issues by then too.

That's odd because our AppVeyor integration works fine. I've completely replaced slack at zero cost. It's brilliant so far for us.

Do your own 3rd party integrations if you need them, it's a 10 minute job and the API for making them happen is amazingly simple and easy. That's where integrations generally start with new platforms, and the commercially provided ones will of course arrive eventually.

Uhh, does Slack ship Linux client now?

I'm not sure how official it is, but I can pacaur -S slack on Linux, yes.

(As others said: You get just an Electron package, which isn't ideal. But.. you get something)

Yeah, it's just Electron isn't it?

Is the fact that it is Electron the reason why my Mac frequently puts it in the list of apps using "significant energy", alongside Chrome?

isnt Microsoft Teams electron too?

Yes, like in macOS or Windows.

>No 3rd party integration that I've seen so far.

It has all sorts of connectors. What do you mean by this?

My opinion(1), after playing a while with MS Teams:

The pros : the product is quite good, let say it is good enough and much better than the status quo of relying on emails or Whatsapp. It is integrated with the Office suite, and if I understand correctly, will be free for pro Office users. It has a handful of very interesting product decisions, like threaded replies and iframe apps.

The cons : MS Teams is not as polished as Slack, the UI (especially of the chat area) is not as clear. The installation/onboarding is not as fluid. They have less apps and integrations (obviously, this is just the beginning).

My guess : MS Teams will not even begin to make a dent in the almost 100% market share of Slack among startups, agencies and similar small, agile groups. The whole Office ecosystem is simply to heavy, the UX is not as great, and some integrations might be missing. On the other hand, it might win big in the entreprise segment, where Slack is less present, and where being in the Office family is not seen as a drawback but actually an sign of solidity

(1) I am an independent dev, working on an app for their platform, so this is an educated guess based on my testing. I will enable Teams to connect with each other or with Slack teams through shared chat (www.smooz.io/microsoft).

> It is integrated with the Office suite

What does this mean, really? Can I start teams chats from Office? Can I see all chats/emails from a person or group?

My main gripe with MS Office is that it's 2017 and they still treat Mac as an inferior platform. No delayed emails, bad handling of bullet lists, and the obvious limitations in using any groupware functionality (this I can understand). About the one good side is that I don't need X1 search, as MS Outlook uses macOS spotlight indexing which is fast compared to PC (though the search operators are weak and OS spotlight is contaminated with email results).

In the Office 365 world Groups are everything. Groups are a shared mailbox and a sharepoint site w/ document library. All permissions are determined by permission to the mailbox. "Integration with Office" means integration with Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync more than it means integration with Excel, Word etc.

A team exists inside a group. When a file is uploaded, it really uploads to sharepoint/onedrive. Each Channel creates a new folder inside the sharepoint document library.

What teams really is is a new skin over the top of sharepoint/skypelync/exchange. You have most of the same features you had in the "older" (last years new) Groups interface, plus you have a persistent chat that skype is missing. A bunch of the buttons are rearranged slightly from groups.

Whats somewhat frustrating is how features and buttons are duplicated three times between a Team, a Group, and a Yammer group. You really need strong organizational policy to standardize behavior, or you will end up with chaos. It's somewhat that obvious Microsoft is trying to converge these three products until they are 100% feature complete, and then merge them into one thing. Groups are a near Yammer clone built on top of Sharepoint/Exchange, and Teams are basically the same thing, but drawn to look like Slack.

Interesting - so Slack offers external access (single channel guest) - is there any similar functionality? Given Teams is tied to Exchange groups, would it be expensive to add an external user?

We deal with external companies a lot where I work and having that feature is pretty useful.

That's why I'm developing Team-to-team and Team-to-Slack chat :-)

there is a way to add external collaborators to groups in some fashion. I dont know how that translates to teams.

http://fasttrack.microsoft.com/roadmap?filters=

type EXTERNAL into the search bar of the link above to see the features they have been working on.

Guest group access has LAUNCHED, and there are 11 other features down in the previously launched section.

The problem with the product is that it really exists to keep big companies on the O365 E3+ plans.

Microsoft's big focus now is to retain subscription revenue. Skype and OneDrive are shit and MS is trying to bulk up the ecosystem around these products. If you work for a big company, you're not going to get approval to POC Slack, Dropbox, Webex, etc as long as you're stuck with the Microsoft all you can eat subscription.

Slack is a killer threat because it displaces email. Exchange has always been the glue that holds the biggest Microsoft cash cow together.

I think you're right. Organizations who use Slack don't use email anymore. MS saw the writing on the wall, and decided to integrate an email-killer in their product suite instead of being eaten from the outside. Rather smart strategy, if you ask me.

OneDrive ( then SkyDrive ) used to be awesome. A folder showing all my files, including the online only ones. Then they ruined it. I still don't understand why.

They have a compulsion to recycle parts that are there. OneDrive is SharePoint, so you get much of the baggage that comes with SharePoint.

They also offer feature parity with on-prem SharePoint, which kneecaps the product. The main point of that product is to block Box or Dropbox sales.

It's only now getting better, in the form of a mobile app on Windows 10 only.

if you are talking about the desktop client and placeholders, they will probably be coming back eventually in some form.

I'm not sure that they're actually trying to go for Slacks user base, I think they're targeting the same people they targeted for Lync and Skype for Business.

Or rather, they are preventing enterprise leakage to Slack, in anticipation that Slack will continue trying to expand into adjacent markets.

Mind you, the only reason anyone in bubbleville has heard of Teams is because Slack had that expensively cringetastic reaction.

I agree

Yea I think you describe it well there as "heavy" it doesn't feel agile. The whole concept that a single login is more fluid only has a little validity because when you login to a suite of apps you feel so overwhelmed. Logging into slack means you're logged into slack. Pretty simply and light.

Yes. I wouldn't know where to start, if I wanted to open a Team with some friends. But in organizations where they already have an Office subscription, and an IT dept to manage the tenants and accounts ? People will love it :-)

Yes, adoption is still an issue for us as it is in a pre-release phase and we have too many options (yammer, email, outlook groups, slack etc) but it's very promising. Once they officially launch it that will help (hopefully) provide a clearer product direction.

It's pretty feature rich for an app in "preview".

It's also free, and I like the tabbed experience. Bringing in Microsoft Planner, some document libraries and PowerBI makes for a pretty compelling story.

Microsoft haters will never use it, but plenty of digital teams may get forced to use it if their IT team have already purchased Office365. And it's not that bad once you forget it was made by Microsoft.

Slack ought to be worried.

>we have too many options (yammer, email, outlook groups, slack etc)

and thats the million dollar problem. year after year microsoft announces a new product / "best practice" as THE way to collaborate.

The sharepoint team is clawing back power after being pushed behind the scenes for a bit.

How can you be confident enough to move forward with groups when the sync client just started working, and they already are pushing out something new that is nearly identical!

We're slowly rolling it out to individual product teams in our small (~50 people) ms-based dev organisation. Things are going reasonably well.

We'd have picked slack over teams in a minute, though it has compliance issues making it unusable for us - slack is just more polished and has a lot more that you can get out of the box / with plugins. That said, teams still has some great features for us, so we'll stick with it for at least 2017. We've tried a few similar options before (primarily group chat) but they all had gaps / issues that resulted in them being not as useful/used as we'd have liked.

There are still a couple of massive gaps in teams for us:

* No on-premise TFS integration

* It seems that Office 365 is all or nothing - we can't tie the o365 account to our primary email address without it messing up external email routing.

If you're trying to replace a culture of email + some IM + files tucked away in some document management system that don't get updated as frequently as they should, it's a good start. If you've already got good communication then it's less valuable.

Good enough product vs crappy status quo + massive Office userbase = will probably end well for them :-)

That's pretty likely. If people don't know how to use collaborative tools, they get frustrated and give up, so a successful product can't alienate its userbase. Skype teams is familiar enough for the email generation to use, but still improves slightly on communication.

There's a huge market out there that's scared of Slack etc, but will love Skype Teams.

Our company bought into Office 365 ecosystem and Teams was a natural choice to try. We haven't used Slack or similar tool before.

Well, Teams allows discussions, but at least in November its built-in Skype for Business (SfB) client worked exactly like the other SfB clients work: not at all well with others. (Serious issues with race conditions on how the server sends the messages to what client, with several listening clients everything turns into a mess!) Given that it wasn't working for us to run ordinary SfB plus Teams, we had to drop it. Can't say I'm overly depressed over this decision... ;)

If Teams's SfB client gains the features the original SfB lacks, or alternatively if Teams would allow to disable SfB part of the software altogether, it might have been workable. I personally didn't like the intrinsic delays the chat process have unlike say IRC (feels very much realtime even though the delays are there under the surface).

There's no info on what updates Teams has seen so we've kept to our original comm channels for the time being.

>(Serious issues with race conditions on how the server sends the messages to what client, with several listening clients everything turns into a mess!)

This makes the mobile client nearly unusable in its current incarnation. I can be sitting on Facebook on my desktop and Messenger on my phone and alternate each sentence between each device. I cannot pick up my phone and continue a Skype for Business conversation I was just having on my desktop. Cant transfer the existing conversation at all. It is almost, nearly, surprising how ill conceived and poorly executed the experience is. I end up switching back to outlook when a person and I want to have a conversation while we constantly bounce between devices, because our email works and syncs everywhere perfectly.

SfB (Lync) is terribly done in terms of the client-server architecture. Messages don't get consistently saved for offline recipients, the issues with several listening clients. For a business communications application, it sure seems a lot less suitable for business/corporate use than Skype Personal.

Yammer's another fiasco. Teams, on the other hand, might turn out to be very decent but the SfB integration brings it down.

After using Slack on my team for about a year to get away from the annoyances of Lync/Skype for Business, management made us shut it down for not being an approved product/not defined by company policy/contributing to team fragmentation across other depts who weren't on it. Fair enough, I guess. We turned on Teams as it comes with our existing Office 365 subscription and we are much likelier to get approval to use it for cost and "Microsoft is a known quantity" reasons. I was excited for something that would finally help us transition into using anything better than Lync compabywide.

So I was disappointed with the chat experience, the notifications, the way my colleagues still using Lync wouldn't consistently get my messages, and the way groups vs private messages are displayed. We all found it really frustrating to use.

I'd be interested to know why any smaller orgs / teams might consider moving since I see this as Microsoft's way of cashing in the on the Enterprise market who are loosely aware of Slack but entirely comfortable with having it blocked.

I can't even find their pricing page. Clicking Free Trial and they are already asking me for information when I don't even know what it costs.

I guess it's startup unfriendly and only marketed for enterprise.

What made you want to switch from Slack to Microsoft Teams? How large is your team? Curious to see the responses to this thread.

The trick is that it's is part of Office365, you can't buy it separately. But for a few bucks you get a coherent suite of many products, Microsoft Teams just being one of them. So it does not have to be greater than Slack, just good enough, since you bought it anyway with your Office365 subscription.

I once did Client work that required certain data protection practices. Can anyone speak to Microsofts draw in that regard. Is it up to the standard you need if you work at a hospital or something like that?

I switched from slack after 4 years and I honestly can't say I've missed any features.

Sounds like a good question for https://reddit.com/r/sysadmin

I don't mind the discussion here, I just feel like you might reach a more specific and bigger audience there.

I think slack should charge on per user basis for any number or team, instead of having to pay for the same user in two different teams.

I also think there should be cheaper/better competitor for slack in the market.

You won't get cheaper AND better. There's already a ton of competition.

Cheaper exists (everything from IRC to HipChat to Mattermost to dozens of Slack clones[1]); you're more than welcome to use any of those. The reason people don't is because Slack is the best (great UI, works well, lots of integrations, network effect, etc).

[1] http://blog.capterra.com/the-top-13-slack-alternatives/

Hi @gkoberger, Mattermost team here. Thanks for the mention.

I'd share that Mattermost has gotten popular as a Slack-alternative recently. There's hundreds of contributors and we're now available in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Dutch and Russian--whereas Slack is English-only.

Also, the open source community has added many features Slack doesn't offer, like threaded messaging, multi-team accounts, markdown support, etc. See: https://www.mattermost.org/what-slack-might-learn-from-its-o...

Right now, Mattermost is most popular among IT organizations looking for an open source, private cloud messaging solution they can control and customize, and we're branching out from there.

I agree, Slack is the best out there, I as a customer would always like competition than monopoly.

Good Competiton always benefits customers.

Yea. We moved to it in the office. We used ryver for a while, looked at slack, but, given we are on office365 and are a Microsoft shop, it was an easy move. So far, so good.

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