Drag chat messages to merge them into one reply thread
Since a lot of people type messages in quick succession, it'd be helpful to have the ability to drag and merge them together into individual "reply threads".
Alex Chantavy
shared this idea
Thanks everyone for the clarifications to this request. Upon further technical review, we have decided to decline this request at this time.
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Suphatra
104 comments
Comments are closed-
Greg Stoll
commented
Yes, I would like this in channels. (and not messaging) Thanks for considering this!
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Ushir Shah
commented
In my view, if someone writes a series of messages in a single channel, like it was a text message or IM, it would be nice to be able to then merge those series of consecutive messages into 1 block, to then act on them as a single message.
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Anonymous
commented
This request is for channels since so many team members have floating replies. Especially newer team members so it’d be great for the user/owner to be able to move replies and group them into the conversation they apply to.
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AlastairC
commented
For me, it is that people coming from slack aren't used to threading, so often just type in at the bottom of the channel, rather than replying.
Rather than delete & repeat, it would be good to drag the new comment into the comment thread. -
Johan Vendrig
commented
from my perspective this is about conversations within a team/channel where people will often by mistake use the "start new conversation" box at the bottom of the screen, rather than the "reply" box at the bottom of a conversation - in those instances it would be great if you could move those messages to the correct conversation so the thread doesn't get broken and the comment doesn't get lost.
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Simon
commented
given you don't have threads in 1-1 chat then it doesn't apply.
So yes its about moving a reply to a thread in a channel discussion.If you had threads in 1-1 chat it would apply to that too.
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Andrew Robinson
commented
For me this is being able to attach new threads in a channel into an existing thread. People are constantly typing new messages instead of hitting reply. Drives admins crazy as you end up with floating out of context messages!
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Anonymous
commented
I see this has merged - definitely need a way to organize the flow of threads, especially when folks don't click "reply" in the correct location and it results in a truncated, separate or new threads.
Admins should have the ability to move all the comments around, members should be able to move their own .
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TimK
commented
SO glad this is under review. While i think some of the UI changes proposed below might help, i think the functionality needs to be addressed that would allow for two threads to be merged back together. UI won't get it all the way done.
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Adam
commented
Perhaps to get around this, it would make more sense for the "thread reply field" to be more clearly differentiated from the "new thread field". Even having the existing thread and its reply field indented (as compared to the new thread field) would make this a clearer distinction.
Using both the Mac and PC clients.
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Anonymous
commented
Also allow "Owner" to do this on a Member message.
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Mark
commented
I imagine it as the ability to grab the orphan post and drag it up to snap it to the correct thread - or even to a point within the thread that makes sense... but the default location in the thread could be by time-stamp.
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Anonymous
commented
Please address this. This frustrates our users to no end, especially in busy channels where grouping the thread is very important.
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Nick George
commented
People do this all the time...… all. the. time.
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Marc LaFleur
commented
This has become a consistent problem, particularly in larger Teams. We regularly find multiple "threads" that stem from miss-parented replies. The ability to "re-parent" would allow moderators to clean this up without having to request the user delete/replace.
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Adam
commented
I think the best way to accomplish this would be to add another option to the ... menu on a conversation that reads something like "Move to previous conversation". This is the menu I need to go to in order to delete the conversation I mistakenly created after I've moved my comment to the end of the previous conversation. Making this a one-click action would be great!
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Anonymous
commented
It really is far too easy to start a new thread vs reply to the intended thread. Hopefully this idea gains enough traction to get the product group's attention!
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Scot Witt
commented
Amen, Brother, horrible UI.
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Jamie Thomson
commented
This request is basically a clone of https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/32684689-combine-conversations. Please can you merge them together.
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Jamie Thomson
commented
I came on here to as for exactly this, thank you to the person that already raised it.
This is definitely a problem - I often see people starting new conversations when they should be replying to existing ones. Its clearly an accident on their part but given it happens so often (and believe me, it does) I'm led to believe that the UI is somewhat to blame. Its not just novice users that do it either, I've seen extremely IT-literate people that are experienced in using Teams making the same mistake.
I find the problem occurs more often when people are replying via a phone app, the distinction there between replying to a new conversation starting a new one is less pronounced.
I think the ability to merge conversations together would be really useful. I suggest the following rules around it:
- 2 conversations can only be merged if they are in the same channel
- Conversation merging can only be done either by the person that started the conversation that is going to be merged, or by a team owner
-If the two conversations each have many messages then the resulting merged conversation might be even messier than when they were separate (due to messages from both conversations being mixed together). The person doing the merge should have the opportunity to preview what the merged conversation would look like.