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
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.
1456 comments
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Anonymous
commented
For years people have been complaining about the inability to resize the Teams window to an acceptable level (it can be resized but takes up over half of a laptop screen because there is a minimum width and height set). I'm actively promoting getting rid of Teams because of this lack of basic end user functionality and Microsoft's refusal to do anything about it after years of people complaining about what should be a very, very simple fix.
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Anonymous
commented
We would need this function too in our office and it would really improve user experience and be user friendly. The lack of this feature has caused us not to use Teams as much as we could.
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Andrei
commented
Yes, compact mode asap please!
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Brian
commented
Currently, we use Slack for chatting and Teams for video calls. Our management wants to move to Teams completely to be able to have a proper chat history. However, this issue is the only reason we are not doing so yet. It is very hard to follow a conversation.
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Anonymous
commented
I wish I did not have to use this app. I actively tell everyone to not use it, mostly because of this issue. Seriously, I do. This is a terrible tool for developers compared to the competition.
I came looking for a way around this, but instead all I see is total disregard to a huge (and probably simple) community request. So, I feel compelled to leave my feedback on my thinking on this.
I feel like I've been sent back to a flip phone.
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Leandro
commented
If Teams is going to replace Skype for Business, we really need a compact-fast mode to interact with people. It already happened to me that i messaged some one using Teams and never got an answer. I messaged the same person using skype for business and got an instant reply, and that was probably greatly influenced buy the compact easy mode skype for b has.
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Anonymous
commented
Why can't it be smaller? I mean, chat rooms open small windows and you can talk to several people at once with small screens.
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Amit Vaidya
commented
Are you really serious about voting and taking people's opinion ?
MORE THAN 3 Years and this basic feature request is still in review !!
As a product designer of MS Team I would be really ashamed of releasing such a bad quality & poorly designed chat. -
Anonymous
commented
meanwhile we are forced to use a less than usable user interface (compared to Slack) as Microsoft sells compelling Team deals to big swaths of corporate America. Unfortunately the decision makers are not the ones having to use the product. We're losing Slack soon and stuck here. Step up your game please.
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Anonymous
commented
Extremely important requirement here for professional usage. Need a dense mode asap
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Anonymous
commented
More than three years to accommodate what is a relatively simple change? I guess that's good progress for MS, huh?
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Daisy
commented
Came here looking for small screen solution and saw that I'm in a queue of requests for smaller footprint than billboard style chat window in Teams. Please move this option to minimize chat to a priority actionable item.
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Eric
commented
Dear Microsoft -- there is a root cause that explains your developers' seemingly total lack of insight here.
The problem with Teams (and to an even greater extent, Slack) are that both of them appear to have been designed BY developers, FOR developers. While we know that this is 100.00% literally true with Slack, I can only surmise that the same is true with Teams.
Consider: Developers work with LARGE display screens and most of the time they are using two or three simultaneously. This is why they have little or no consideration for ensuring their UX/GUI designs are compact and space efficient.
I guarantee that if your UX/UI developers are FORCED to work from a single 14" laptop screen (like 98% of your customers do) then products like Teams will look VERY different and you won't have to be listening to complaints for YEARS from the people who are your most important market.
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Anonymous
commented
I agree with the users below. It's ridiculous that the UI takes up almost 1/3 of my screen real-estate Especially when a large majority of it is completely wasted space. And if you do try to compact it down to just a chat window, you lose the contact list (and thus quick view of member status)
I too am working from home more and need to have the chat window open so I can see my teammates Move this to "in progress" and just fix it please! It has been years. At the very least, get rid of all the wasted whitespace and make it more compact. We all don't have dual 65" 4K monitors or a dedicated screen just for chat. -
Anonymous
commented
Hello,Please can you move this into 'In Progress'. With the Covid-19 pandemic and absolutely the whole world communicating through teams - it is quite difficult to manage multiple topic chats within a channel/group/121 chats. As the original person suggested, Slack have nailed the efficiency and clean feel to chat management -
I am currently transitioning my 15 people remote team from Slack to Teams, and this is our biggest reason for resistance.I have added an example. #loveteams #butwestruggling.
Compacting the
* Channels
* Direct messagesShowing
* Teams
* unreads
* threads
* thread view (follow) alongside mainchat -
Anonymous
commented
Please move this from Under Review to In Progress. I'm sure the Developers and User Experience Engineers can enhance the design while working from home. I'd be curious what else is higher on the priority list?
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Anonymous
commented
Well just look at how Slack has done the chat, no, REALLY LOOK. I want to see a similar approach in Teams, like yesterday. And no I don't se please, just do it.
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Sean Ellis
commented
Anonymous wrote:
" I think MS developers are fixated on copying Apple when they actually have the lead in Business Apps"
This is possibly the "third user" effect, as explained by UI Guru Bruce "Tog" Tognazzi here: https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/
Normally, we consider two classes of users - novices and experts. Tog points out that there is a third class: the users who haven't bought the product yet. For them, it's the stand-out features (that they will never actually use), the large and inviting UI (which is actually a burden in everyday use), the things that look good in demos.
Hence the focus on things like the background blur, the large and friendly window, the neat colour scheme, and so on, at the expense of things that actually allow you to use the product day after day.
I am sure that the developers have a list of thigns a mile long that they know would improve the product immensely. But none of them are big or **** enough to attract the attention of the marketing department.
It's clear that the marketing department never take any notice of what's on UserVoice. Anything requested here that gets fixed is by coincidence - something they wanted fixed anyway.
This is why I spend some time in other forums, where the marketing department hang out - or at least their potential customers do - trying to point out these annoyances. The Teams blog is nicely visible. The Teams twitter feed too.
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Anonymous
commented
a side bar/docking station would work for the chats that can be made bigger/smaller as needed.
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Chris Jorgensen
commented
This issue is one of the worst issues on teams. The client has way to much white space and to make it worse, you can't even minimize photos and giphys.
