Poll: Which Chat Solution Does Your Company Use
Inspired by a recent post about Linen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33248488#33253157
What is used, why? What's good? What's bad?
What is used, why? What's good? What's bad?
The only thing I prefer on Windows is that it uses native notifications. Other than that, it's the same laggy, broken piece of crap on all platforms.
When I was still using a Mac, teams there seemed similar to Linux.
Right now, the only approved chat solution is Skype for Business (with only plaintext messaging - rich text, files and images have been disabled for security reasons).
Other chat and social media sites are blocked at a firewall level (including Slack, Discord, Facebook, etc.).
I’ve heard bad things about Teams, but it’s surely better than the current solution we use with its lack of persistence and plain text limitation.
At my last production plant, we used internal IRC server for the factory floor (export controlled) to cut/paste between test stations, cant use most cloud chat for export controlled data.
Also another internal IRC for the NOC and systems admins, mostly since its been up for a decade+.
But mostly teams.
Deep in the playbooks there's still an IRC fallback.
+1
This is Zulip biggest downfall. I’ve participated over the past 2 years in chat.zulip.org activately advocating for better UI design, even multiple times mocking up what an improved UI would look like and there’s so much stubborness to change it frustrating.
I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing more than small tweaks will every change regarding the UI, which is unfortunate.
https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=label%3Aredesign+sor...
https://chat.zulip.org/#narrow/stream/101-design
At the second link, you can click on `more topics` under #design and filter for `ui redesign` to see some of the topics about that.
I’m not meaning to hate in it. I actually love Zulip which is why I spent the time and effort mocking up ways to improve it. But the core developers don’t like change.
The problem is that it's also the chat system a lot of my friends and hobbies use, so it really messes with my work/life balance. If I do ever use Discord for work again, I'm going to have to make a separate account.
(I am of course biased since I work on this product, but these are my own opinions)
How hard is it to not mess up chat
Not messing up chat while middle managers continuing promising quarterly growth, that's another story...
If you start using things like actual “Teams” it starts getting troublesome. We use it like a Facebook wall. Individual vertical heads will post information or call to action from time to time but it is largely static while we chat with each other all day outside it.
This is bad but what pisses off tech illiterate people even more is they have an entire share point built for the fucking software. Most tech illiterate people cannot understand how to use it and keep switching between that and chat and losing their work. If you need to use a file heavily while chatting, you need to open it on the desktop version or the entire experience will suck donkey nuts. If you need to constantly use that particular share point file system for daily tasks, then you’re an idiot if you can’t figure out or ask IT for the easier solution of just syncing it to your file explorer and never touching the Teams app.
The app sucks major balls but a lot of it is because it caters to a non tech savvy crowd and they’re constantly trying to walk a fine line between being functional graphically and also allowing power users to just get super access and get on with their day.
What kind of computer are you running this on? In my case, I have a Zen 3 laptop and Teams can't keep up with my typing. It's the only app where this happens. And I only type with basically 2.5 fingers per hand, I'm not some kind of typing Olympics title-holder.
It also somehow manages to be the only program where I often type my letters out of order.
If god forbid I want to scroll back up in the chat to see what was said a few days ago, it's an absolutely horrible experience. The chat jumps all over the place, loading messages is laggy, and occasionally, it downright doesn't work (the bubbles stay blank). I need to go to a different chat, come back, and try to go back up the history again.
Don't even get me started on search, which, if it works, won't give you any context.
I think the reason people complain is that we're in 2022, running ridiculously powerful computers, and this crap still manages to be an all-round inferior experience than MS's own MSN messenger 20 years ago.
Yeah, I know it's "more than a chat app", but as you put it, it does it terribly.
So if the chat part sucks, the "more than chat part" sucks, what's left to not complain about?
Maybe all these troubles go away with more memory but just to be clear, I face almost none of the issues you’re talking about except for the truly crappy search which has only marginally improved this year but is still very, very bad.
In both cases, it's larger than most regular office workers usually have, so I don't think Teams should expect this kind of machine.
This is far and above what a normal user is expected to have discovered, but I just needed to point out that complaining on it on this forum is a bit hypocritical considering the vast majority of us are certainly top 0.1% on the tech literacy spectrum and most likely have access to very powerful systems that the typical user does not.
Had a few weird bugs with Matrix (Probably Dendrite's fault) but so far everyone seems happy.
Element has become surprisingly snappy the last few years.
There have been some avatars missing in the contact list, notification indicator when there aren't any new notifications and other small stuff. Nothing major really, works great! Especially since you have weekly releases with plenty of fixes. I'll keep an eye open for bugs and drop by #dendrite!
Awesome job with the software, looking forward to the coming releases!
Even for 1-1, I get too many of those those “Hi Joe” pings without any content.
I have a permanent status “nohello.com” but the UI is such trash, no one even knows it’s there
It's not Google's fault your coworkers suck at chatting.
We migrated off Skype to Teams. Cisco Webex Teams, that is. :(