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> I've never really "got" it when it comes to tools like Slack or Teams.

I've used everything from IRC and ICQ through XMPP and HipChat to Slack, Discord, and Teams and let me share why I think Teams is so much more than all of its predecessors.

As someone who manages a large Active Directory domain and Office365 setup, Teams comes free. All I had to do was install the Teams client on users desktops and everything just worked instantly. Users logged in, installed it on their mobile devices, all secured by O365 2FA. I created an AD group for managers and all of them got the ability to send out Teams meeting requests via a local dial-in number for $4/month. When they schedule a meeting, the attendees can use Teams desktop app, mobile app, web app, or just dial-in via phone. Without this $4/month, users get everything except the dial-in phone number.

I created a few "Ask [Department]" channels in Teams and my users are using them in the appropriate way without over posting. Users message others in groups of 2-5 and create their own channels without asking IT. My users have conducted Teams webcasts for 40+ attendees, frequently video chat with groups of 8+, and have drastically reduced texting via their personal cellphone or using the old internal IM client. All of this without any training from IT.

So Teams is different because except for email, it has replaced text IM, SMS/MMS, forums, audio conferencing, video conferencing, and screen-sharing. It can also replace file-sharing and co-authoring but for business reasons I disabled that as much as I could. Also it automatically integrates with Outlook Calendar so users are alerted the same as before, just with a Join URL now. We were paying over $2k/mo for audio conferencing and now it's barely a few hundred dollars for a better, more stable product. Other than audio dial-in, Teams is effectively free for us because we have been on the O365 Enterprise plan for years now.

I last used Slack about 6 months ago and back then it had poor audio conferencing and no built-in video conferencing or screen-sharing. I was hoping after they bought Screenhero, at least screen-sharing would be native quickly but that was not my experience. Overall I like Slack, just that for enterprises already on O365, Teams is a no-cost no-brainer. Not even going to try setting up Slack.

Every few months I revisit the idea of Teams and ask around whether the notifications have been fixed. The answer is always no.

Until MS figures out notifications, I won’t be switching. It is hard to understate how annoying it is to not be able to trust accurate notifications and notification settings.

slack notifications are beyond broken as well, so no competition there

Discord's notifications are on-point, so competition _there_.

Of course Discord has the image problem of being marketed to gamers (and that's fine, because it lets them focus their efforts), but as a tool it is pretty well crafted.

So I'm not the only one. At least once a week for 4 years I have tried fiddling with my notification settings in several different slack projects because they're not functioning how they're supposed to (not how I have set them up).

I just gave up eventually.

Could you provide examples regarding how they've failed?

Have you spoken with Slack directly about this? I've brought up several issues to their "Feedback" area and usually have very quick responses for a company that services as many people as Slack does.

Apologies, not sure what you mean by notifications. Do you mean email notifications of unread Teams messages? I get a few of those and just ignore them. When I look at the Teams apps, it's very clear what I need to respond to.

Notifications on my laptop or phone about DMs or @‘s. There are certain people or channels that I want to get notifications from. Since I can’t trust the notifications I end up having to leave Teams open and check it constantly. This is distracting to me.

Most messages don’t have an expectation of a timely response. But of those that do, I need to be able to rely on notifications.

So maybe I've just never seen it used properly since most of what I've seen is more along the lines of a single "General" channel that's way too hard to follow. I can definitely see the value in your "Ask [Department]" explanation which is a great example.

I've only really evaluated Teams for one use case and there were limitations that made it impractical. I was hoping to set up Power Automate rules that would let me forward an email to a group and have it auto-create a Planner task, auto-create a Team Channel with a link to the task and a copy of the original email posted, and reply to the email with a link to the channel. Then all conversation about the task happens in the Team Channel and someone can own the task to make sure it doesn't get forgotten. When the task is closed, the channel gets archived. However, there's a limit of 200 channels per team, so it's not good for short lived channels. Planner also has some crazy low limitations, but I don't recall what they are.

I know that sounds a lot like an issue tracker, but the hope was to trend towards the other scenario you describe where email, IM, SMS, etc. are all replaced by a single tool. Just email + SMS are enough to de-thread a conversation and cause confusion / miscommunication.

My users have conducted Teams webcasts for 40+ attendees, frequently video chat with groups of 8+

How are you finding the Teams limitation of only 9 people on screen at once in a videoconference? That is the one major flaw that Teams lags the competition in, e.g. Zoom.

Hasn't been a problem because many users just dial-in via phone or app (audio-only). Only a few turn on the video.

No one turns on the video at our corporation. Everyone only uses audio. We've actually hit the 250 user limit on some of these Teams conference calls (major outage, all departments needed help), and not one of them bothered with video.

Honest question, but why would I want to see more than 9 people in a video conference?

My vision of video conference is that one person is sharing their screen or something, why would I want to watch other peoples avatars or rooms in all kinds of video quality

Honest question, but why would I want to see more than 9 people in a video conference?

Because it more closely mimics the experience of being in a room. For example maybe I want to listen to, or be, the person speaking while gauging reactions from facial expressions. I have a 30" 4k monitor, I can easily have 20-30 faces on screen at once in software that supports it.

If you read the MS forums there are plenty of complaints about this, a typical use case is a teacher or lecturer who wants to see their entire class.

I am totally OK with the number of faces on screen at once being a user-configurable parameter in the client - but 9 is a hard limit baked into Teams.

Huh, can you assign seating on Zoom?

Say, "this is how I want the grid to be arranged", and maintain that arrangement over many meetings, with absent people blank and not repacked?

That is my single biggest complaint about Zoom.

Also, if you are a host/co-host, the order of the "Participants" list keeps shifting. I end up accidentally muting/unmuting people, because their position changed between my moving the cursor over their name, and clicking.

You could make a feature request!

For a service that's probably being marketed a lot at schools, that sounds like a perfect feature for the classroom and you could use it, as well :)

If you are a trainer, then having immediate access to all the attendees is fairly important.

I'm in the process of "refactoring" my training approach to a videoconference approach (using Zoom).

I'm actually really surprised at how intimidating the process has been. I've been doing training and speaking in person for a long time, but not via Zoom.

It will work out, but the biggest issue that I'm encountering, is not having access to "immediate feedback."

A very good article on the topic was written by a well-known (and extremely effective) trainer, Erica Sadun, here: https://ericasadun.com/2020/03/11/so-youre-going-to-teach-re...

Virtually all my teaching is online, in a dedicated tool. Of course I used slides and approach to teaching that i inherited from previous teachers of the course - which includes heavy use of polling using the builtin easy polling feature of our online class tool (collaborate ultra).

Once i taught a guest lecture in zoom. I ended up using directpoll.com to approach the polling features I'd normally use. Lots of yes/no questions, easily asked and answered (always same url, can watch answers coming in), some exercises.

Extremely positive response. Simple, oft-used interaction truly is a game changer - even if limited to yes/no.

Beldin -Garath's brother?

Personally, I can't see a reason to see these many people at one time.

Nine people on the screen is a nice ratio, and if the 10th person says something, they take the place of the person that hasn't said anything the longest on the grid.

There are other reasons I dislike Teams, but this isn't one of them.

they take the place of the person that hasn't said anything the longest on the grid

This is just a recipe for excluding people who don't speak up. In a larger meeting I particularly want to prompt juniors to speak up, for example. I also want juniors to see each other so they feel more a part of it.

If you are only interested in the last person to speak that's fine but you might as well just use a voice call for that.

Voice calls would reduce Zoom fatigue. I’d argue having everyone on screen at once is an edge case, and one that causes more stress than benefit to participants.

I turn my video off during video conference calls, but others may not feel they have the autonomy to do so.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video...

Then it is on you, as the moderator, to step up and call on these silent participants. If not then get tooling that does but, FYI, none of the major video platforms have an option to avoid your recipe for exclusion.

How is that a limitation? The person speaking should have focus and even then can you guarantee that everyone is going to use video? The side bar chat is a good feature for running conversations while another is presenting.

FWIW We are still dealing with the four persons on screen limitation and even then there is a good chance of no one having video. Management wisely decided against forcing the issue. Plus throw in that many times we end up with someone sharing their screen.

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