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.
Thomas Nimstad
shared this idea
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
939 comments
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Luke
commented
When will we be able to switch between a person to person chat to a team chat without having to click 4 times? Right now you have to click Teams, then Team Name, then Channel, then you still have to click on the channel chat window so that the favorites sidebar slides out of the way. I know MS can do a better job with the UI/UX than this design. Current method is so cumbersome.
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Anonymous
commented
Can a complete amateur apply for that position? I'm sure I won't make the Teams worse than it's now :-D
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Sean Ellis
commented
Suphatra is leaving the Teams team. We wish her well, and call on the new holder of the user liaison role to update us on the progress of this simple and necessary feature.
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Anonymous
commented
The UI is so "great" that almost 99% of first time users use "Start new conversation" instead of "Reply". Please make the the UI elements even bigger, it's the best way to go.
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S
commented
I agree. The Teams UI is wasting a lot of space. More content could be shown per space, while still providing a clean and easy-to-handle look & feel.
Actually, some of my team say that it's hard to follow conversations, especially because so less content is shown (and they are forced to focus on the Teams window to scroll up or to expand messages).
This is one major reason why my colleagues (dev team of 20) want to move to Slack :( -
M
commented
Teams UI is an abomination. It's like communicating with sticky notes on a whiteboard. Allow a user to change their interface to allow for accessibility when required, but don't force everyone to read messages as if they were billboards.
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Anonymous
commented
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Sean Ellis
commented
@Aaron commented: "... when someone types more than 5 lines in a channel then their message is cut off with a "See More" button ..."
That's a very good point, especially given the whole point of the program is to facilitate communication. Requiring action to be taken just to see a single message is just unbelievably ...
[See more] -
Michael
commented
The Teams UI is horrible. Just copy Slack!
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Aaron
commented
Due to a company directive, my team now uses Teams. We were formally using Slack, and I must say that the waste of space is abhorrent. Each message in a channel doesn't need it's own text bubble. When I send several message in a row, they should all be grouped into the same text bubble. In addition why must there be several inches of white space on either side of the message as padding?
Also, when someone types more than 5 lines in a channel then their message is cut off with a "See More" button that I have to change focus to Teams and click the button. I should just be able to read the message in it's entirety without switching Teams to the active application. Please think of the people who enjoy using a keyboard.
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Anonymous
commented
Hurry up
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Laurin
commented
Still the reason not to change to teams....to ugly, to complicated - slack is so incredible simple and all you have to do is copy it...how hard can it be?
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MrMan
commented
Well thinking about this it could be worse, imagine what all the Allo users are going through
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Ulf
commented
So basically this has been raised two years and we are nowhere yet? Seems MS is confused about their RTC portfolio and has taken a break from it all ...
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Luis Garcia
commented
Oh and to keep up with tradition from my last comment in August.
Still WAITING.... x20
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Luis Garcia
commented
STOP TALKING ABOUT DOING IT AND DO IT ALREADY
2 Years and counting now for this request, climbing to 1,000 comments and all we get from you is blah blah blah "we will not be making a sharp design turn"
Seriously? You're worse than Trump with this #fakenews -
Anonymous
commented
this application's features are grossly inadequate for development teams
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Eric
commented
"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."
Pure spin. You don't design an application from the 1% PoV, you design it for the 99%. The only group mentioned that even makes sense is visually impaired. Please name a single other product meant to be used by the masses that is designed from the ground up for such a specific group of individuals.
And I can't add anything that hasn't been said below. Your response is disgraceful and look at the below, your customers are fighting their way away from Microsoft. *sigh* oh well.
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Ross
commented
I stop in from time to time to see if Teams is getting anywhere and I can't say I'm surprised to find that it hasn't.
To anyone reading this, if you aren't dependent on Microsoft Teams, I recommend switching to Slack, Discord, or some other competing service. Teams tries too hard to be "cute" instead of focusing on actual basic features that help with productivity and until Microsoft figures that out you'll just be wasting your time using it.
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Sean Ellis
commented
Another milestone today. It is now 700 days since Microsoft first said they were working on this, the #1 UI request.
Since then, they said:
"We now have a design and are conducting 1:1 research testing with users." (2017-04-27)
"We are working on changes that will be made in the coming weeks, and just need one last round of your input" (2017-06-07)
"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." (2017-09-22)
"We are still working on this. There won’t be one huge update, but instead we will release small updates over time" (2018-02-12)
"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. :)" (2018-03-06)
"we are seriously considering a compact mode" (2018-12-15)
Throughout this process, the only changes which have actually made it into product are either so trivial as to be effectively invisible, or the polar opposite of what was actually requested.
"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." (2018-12-15)
This is absolutely not evident. If it were a guiding design principle, the compact mode would have been implemented within a month of work starting.
We have spent 700 days (and more) telling you, showing you, and in some cases implementing prototypes of what we need. We could not be more clear. The support for this feature is overwhelming, and it's an option, so it won't disturb a single user who does not want to use it.
As we go into 2019, we want to see:
- A public commitment to implement this idea fully and as specified by the users.
- A timeline for implementation.
- A consultation process where we get to see what you are doing.
- Deployment.You have had 700 days. Time to deliver.