Compact mode

I really like Teams. I do. But the current chat layout is not suited for professional chats. It's way to space consuming. It looks like something imported from MSN with smiley's that take half of the screen. I would say that Slack have nailed it because they focused on the ability keeping a tight window with lots of chat text visible. In Teams the window is full and starts scrolling after like 10 sentences.

20,003 votes

Thomas Nimstad shared this idea · December 12, 2016 · Flag idea as inappropriate… · Admin →

under review ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · March 04, 2021

Thank you for all your responses to the design survey. The survey is now closed.

Show previous admin responses (23)

needs your feedback ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · March 02, 2021

Teams Design Research is looking for volunteers to respond to a survey about Compact Mode. If you’re interested and and willing to participate in this 5-10 minute survey, please visit https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6rn0vsNAtIkUAC2.

The survey will be available until Tuesday, March 9th, 2021.

Thank you!

under review ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · February 13, 2020

We are working on a design with more density in mind. Until this design is solidified we are putting this item back to Under Review.

planned ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · July 03, 2019

We’re currently working on defining a compact mode experience. I will post more details when we have more to share.

~Alex

planned ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · March 12, 2019

This suggestion is still planned. I don’t have further updates on timing, but will share as we have them. Thanks.

needs your feedback ·

AdminAlex (Teams Engineering, Microsoft Teams) responded · March 12, 2019

planned ·

Suphatra responded · December 15, 2018

Hi everyone, thank you for your patience since the last update.

We want to extend a huge thanks to all of you who have engaged with us on this topic of compact chat. Your input has been invaluable and helped inform our design and decision-making.

As we look to 2019, we will be pursuing plans to continue to make the product more and more space efficient. We see this as a guiding design principle, as well as a backlog of requests from UserVoice that we catalogue, discuss, debate, brainstorm and problem solve.

This principle is also why we will not be making a sharp design turn towards a permanently heavy dense design. Our user base is a wide range of people — such as high school students, the visually impaired, open source developers, and your every day knowledge worker. Because of our broad reach, we must maintain a standard of usability that meets many visual needs.

Lastly, we are seriously considering a compact mode. This would be an option — a switch, you might say — that makes everything quite dense. We are entering a new phase of product development that makes this more possible than before. To that end, I’m changing the title of this request to “Compact Mode.” We’ll keep you abreast of these plans as we learn more ourselves.

Meanwhile, we really appreciate your patience, your feedback, and your support of Teams. Thank you for being part of #MicrosoftTeams!

Sincerely,
Suphatra

working on it ·

Warren responded · August 06, 2018

This feature is still in the works. I hope to have more info in the coming weeks.

-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · June 02, 2018

This feature request is still in the works. No additional details are available at this time.
-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · April 24, 2018

This feature request is still being worked upon. No additional updates are available at the moment.

-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · March 12, 2018

Great news everyone, we have made a first step towards a professional compact chat layout.

We have released density changes including updates to how message threads collapse. :)

There are more changes in the works to bring you a true professional compact layout.

Thank you all for the support and feedback!
-Warren

partially done ·

Warren responded · March 06, 2018

Great news everyone, we have made a first large step towards a professional compact chat layout.

We have released density changes including updates to how message threads collapse! :)

There are more changes in the works to bring you a true professional compact layout.

Thank you all for the support and feedback!
-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · February 12, 2018

We are still working on this. There won’t be one huge update, but instead we will release small updates over time which will help with the request.

There are two things in particular we are focusing on. One being an increase in density and two, a more compact mode.

“Density” would be a reduction of the overall white space you see on your screen.
“Compact” would be more about a reduction in overall size which is most beneficial to smaller screens and mobile devices.

I would be interested in seeing in the comments which piece feels more important to you all. The density or compact view?

If you could comment and let me know, it would be helpful information to provide to the feature team!

Thank you for all your suggestions and feedback!

-Warren

working on it ·

Warren responded · December 15, 2017

This is still being worked upon. I don’t have any additional update details to share at this time, but hopefully soon I will have some further details.
-Warren

working on it ·

Gino Buzzelli responded · September 22, 2017

Hi everyone,

I’m Gino and I’m the Product Manager that’s been hard at work to bring you a more compact chat design. First, I really want to thank you for your patience while we worked on this request. We spent months testing designs with users, reiterating concepts, and reading through your feedback, to make sure we could meet as many of your common needs as we could.

Secondly, I’m really happy to announce the changes that will be rolling out soon. We’ve made product-wide improvements to the UI that give you greater overall density. Here are some things you’ll see:
- Left rail more condensed vertically
- Gutters reduced
- Line heights reduced
- Emojis will be smaller
- Links for inline attachments

Please note that these changes will first ship on desktop, then later mobile. I’ll keep checking this forum to read your feedback as you experience the new design. We really value your thoughts and ideas. Thank you for supporting Teams!

Sincerely,
Gino

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · July 25, 2017

Hi everyone,

Quick update that we have made incremental changes and you should start to see those white margins becoming much thinner and chat getting more dense in the coming weeks. It will not be the fully dense mode, but it will be moderate changes so not to jar our full user base. These changes are being implemented across the board, so this is NOT a compact chat mode that is an optional setting, but permanent changes to the UI to increase density.

I’m keeping this item on the “working on it” status because we are going to continue making the product more dense overall. We’ll continue to update you as we make progress.

Big and special thanks to the hundreds of you who participated in the user research. It gave us really great information to make these permanent changes. THANK YOU!

Sincerely,
Suphatra

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · June 26, 2017

needs your feedback ·

Suphatra responded · June 06, 2017

Hi everyone! Thanks again for helping us improve the Microsoft Teams density. Your feedback is highly valued and we take it very seriously. To summarize, here’s what we’ve heard from you so far:

Not enough content visible without scrolling.
There is a lot of unused, wasted space.
Messages are not wide enough.
Emojis are too large.
Reply button takes up too much space.

We are working on changes that will be made in the coming weeks, and just need one last round of your input to help inform our design. Please click here to take the survey: https://microsoft.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1RJsc3gJjkn77mJ

Thanks again and if you have any questions on the survey, please reach out to Erin Arcuri (Erin.Arcuri@microsoft.com).

Cheers,
Suphatra

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · April 26, 2017

Hi everyone, thanks for your help on this item and all the feedback you’ve sent. Special thanks to the kind folks who participated in the Twitter Q&A and subsequent research studies.

We now have a design and are conducting 1:1 research testing with users. We need an even representation of demographics, so we can’t take all users. But if you are interested in possibly being someone for testing, please just email me directly (sparavi@microsoft.com) with your name, age, gender, location, industry, job title and experience with Teams (how long you’ve been using it, how often). I’ll forward that on to our research team who will intake you from there.

We’re getting closer to the finish line! Thank you for your patience and your support. Message me or tweet me if you need anything at all.

Sincerely,
Suphatra

needs your feedback ·

Suphatra responded · March 22, 2017

Hi everyone, reminder that we are hosting the user feedback round table on Twitter tomorrow (3/23) @ 10am Pacific Time.

To participate, just log into Twitter and follow the hashtag #CompactChat. You’ll be able to share your feedback directly with the designers and engineers who put together our framework.

If you have any questions, just ping me at twitter.com/skprufo and I can help you.

Suphatra

P.S. I would have put this live chat session in Teams, but we don’t have Guest Access (coming soon!), so for now — Twitter it is. Hope to see you there, and looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · March 20, 2017

Hi everyone,

We would love to hear your feedback. Please join us for a live round table on Twitter. See details below:

Attend a live chat with us on Twitter on 3/23 @ 10am Pacific Time. To participate, just sign into Twitter and follow the hashtag #CompactChat. When you want to contribute to the conversation, just tweet with that same hashtag. If you get confused, just tweet to me at @skprufo or Gino Buzzelli at @ginobuzz.

Thank you and looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this user idea!

Suphatra
Microsoft Teams

needs your feedback ·

Suphatra responded · March 13, 2017

Hi everyone, we’re working on this but we need more feedback.

We’d like to invite you to a feedback roundtable about this item. You’ll share your thoughts directly with the design team, and be shown some examples.

If you are interested, please sign up here: https://1drv.ms/xs/s!AryUNzh1ogZzif8pDcOcx2pW45I87w and in the “What feature set?” question, please write that you’re interested in the “Professional Compact Chat Layout” roundtable.

I hope to see many of you sign up and to hear you bring your voice to the design table.

Thank you for helping us make Teams better and better.

Sincerely,
Suphatra

working on it ·

Suphatra responded · February 08, 2017

Its happening. We’re working on this!

If you’re interested in participating in design and usability testing for this feature, just submit your info here and we’ll get loop you in: https://1drv.ms/xs/s!AryUNzh1ogZzif8pDcOcx2pW45I87w

Thanks,
Suphatra

under review ·

Suphatra responded · January 27, 2017

Hi everyone, this has been routed to the Design team. The suggestion is under review.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ping me via email or on Twitter @skprufo.

Suphatra
Microsoft Teams

1770 comments

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Paul commented · April 07, 2021 13:53 · Flag as inappropriate

OK, so it's been a month since the design survey closed, and over 4 years since the inception of this request. It is the 5th most voted on idea on UserVoice. Can we PLEASE get some timely traction on this? Having a 28" monitor running 1080p, Teams shows literally half the content I can view in similar conversations in Slack's compact mode.

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Mike commented · March 26, 2021 07:15 · Flag as inappropriate

Just a reminder, I keep this set of CSS modifications to Teams up to date and it's free :) it compacts Teams down and makes it look more like Slack: https://userstyles.org/styles/165569/slack-teams

Feedback is always welcome!

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Anonymous commented · March 25, 2021 08:57 · Flag as inappropriate

Five. Years. Later.

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Gavin Greenwalt commented · March 23, 2021 09:48 · Flag as inappropriate

It's the year 2030. Microsoft has acquired Discord for $50B. Humanity has reached the stars and merged with a global AI.

A simple hello in Microsoft Teams still takes up half of your screen.

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- 2021-03-23 09_42_05-General (Straightface Studios) _ Microsoft Teams.png 15 KB
Andrew Zhilin commented · March 16, 2021 00:44 · Flag as inappropriate

I am working on plugin, which will solve this issue. Beta testers will get free licence, you can apply here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfHtmL23tOhl8oXt-XHMMXDSyslP60voqbHa0cTe8CIzQTReQ/viewform

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Joe commented · March 12, 2021 14:58 · Flag as inappropriate

I would prefer not to see a chat from 3 days ago, just to keep the Contacts pane open. I just want to know my team members availability from the Contacts list. Please make it so, that it doesn't take half a screen just to keep Teams open. If not, I'll find another platform to run in. I can't spare that much screen real estate.

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Brian Handscomb commented · March 11, 2021 09:13 · Flag as inappropriate

Didn't comment at the time, but by the time I saw the invite for the supposedly almost week long survey it had bee closed. By my estimation it was open less than 24 hours, opening early hours GMT 3rd Mar and closing late hours GMT same day, despite the invite saying it would be open until 9th. The fabled "Microsoft Time" strikes again... My take on the layout is that it is horribly convoluted and frankly ugly. It wastes SO much space with how threads are handled (the direct subject of this "idea") but things like "chat" and "teams" and "activity" for three types of the same thing and mutually exclusive is in a way another waste of space.

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Anonymous commented · March 08, 2021 07:38 · Flag as inappropriate

PLEASE! make the pop-out chat window SMALLER!!!!

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Anonymous commented · March 08, 2021 07:19 · Flag as inappropriate

I'm joining the cacophony here. You sent me a note requesting feedback by March 9. I fit this into my list of priorities and attempted in good faith to respond before the deadline. Today is March 8, and I see that the survey is not currently active. This is not the way to treat your customers.

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Jussi Halonen commented · March 08, 2021 02:34 · Flag as inappropriate

>Sending survey's with a 9th of March deadline and then closing them on the 4th of March is quite unprofessional.

Couldn't agree more, like spitting our face.

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Anonymous commented · March 08, 2021 01:25 · Flag as inappropriate

Sending survey's with a 9th of March deadline and then closing them on the 4th of March is quite unprofessional.

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Matthew commented · March 07, 2021 07:27 · Flag as inappropriate

Michael Hofmann hits all the main points below.

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Anonymous commented · March 06, 2021 09:56 · Flag as inappropriate

After years of no activity in this thread I just got an email informing me about the survey.
It states: The survey will be available until Tuesday, March 9th, 2021.

However, when I click the link it's unavailable and the thread contains a message from admin that says: The survey is now closed.

It's fascinating how unprofessionally Microsoft handles this situation. It's beyond my imagination how you guys can build even a half decent product with such an organizational chaos there. Oh wait..

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Steve Gauthier commented · March 04, 2021 07:53 · Flag as inappropriate

Another suggestion would be to make better use of space and simplifying chat by removing the tabs from the top and including the files list the main view. See attached.

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- Chat & Files.png 720 KB
Nick Moroniti commented · March 04, 2021 06:17 · Flag as inappropriate

That link results in this message "Sorry, this survey is not currently active."

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Bram Mertens commented · March 04, 2021 02:45 · Flag as inappropriate

Alex: the survey reports: "Sorry, this survey is not currently active."
Also the email notification from uservoice about your comment was quarantined by Office365 as a phishing email.

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Bernard Vander Beken commented · March 04, 2021 00:27 · Flag as inappropriate

Hi Alex, I'm getting an error

"Sorry, this survey is not currently active." even though it's still March 4th.

And a different topic: when I login using the magic link on this uservoice, I receive a hard to read email in Outlook 365 (dark mode on Windows).

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ValH commented · March 03, 2021 22:16 · Flag as inappropriate

"Sorry, this survey is not currently active."

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Jorge Martinez commented · March 03, 2021 20:46 · Flag as inappropriate

Error,,..

Sorry, this survey is not currently active.

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A Hendricks commented · March 03, 2021 17:53 · Flag as inappropriate

Error: Survey is not currently active.

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