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.

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

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

Show previous admin responses (20)

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

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Anonymous commented · July 12, 2019 06:10 · Flag as inappropriate

Indeed we need the options to manage the font, font type, layout, theme: not just Zoom in/out, high-contrast, etc. as that is a personal settings.
Missing the option to rename or hide the standard channels like [Files] as we use SharePoint page embed to Document Library; Missing the option the reorder the tabbed Channels; Planner is really childish, here is not even a way to set the default tracker view to Schedule or Group by Progress (so we will use again embed to Sharepoint List); Also because we miss the options to export data from the Teams; No advanced authorisation model possible, to manage authorisation for each channel or tab.

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Anonymous commented · July 11, 2019 13:57 · Flag as inappropriate

Hurry up

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Charlie commented · July 11, 2019 05:49 · Flag as inappropriate

Please add a way to remove the chat bubbles. This is now my primary communication tool and I need to have a professional tool. Just copy Slack and be done with it.

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Anonymous commented · July 10, 2019 20:34 · Flag as inappropriate

Hurry up

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Tovan commented · July 10, 2019 16:17 · Flag as inappropriate

@microsoft, please listen to us.
My company already make Ms. Teams as an official collaboration & approval space, so people going crazy about how to make Teams Look efficiently & friendly.

Tks

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Joe commented · July 10, 2019 15:54 · Flag as inappropriate

Need more choices for customization. Themes, sizing, fonts, etc.

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Disgusted with the loss of customization commented · July 10, 2019 11:30 · Flag as inappropriate

M$ is only interested in telling peeps how they are allowed to use their bloatware, and cramming as much of their other bloatware down user throats as they possibly can. They aren't interested in making it actually usable or listening to anything anyone has to say about making it less user-hostile, or even more productive. W7 was the last OS where we, the user, had any real say in how the interface looked and felt. Now we only have what some fool at M$ thinks we want, which appears to based on how much ***** they smoked. The REAL solution is to return to days of yore, across the board, where the company defines the functionality and the user defines the interface metrics to suit their needs. Tabs or undocked. Open new in same or different window. Where and how history is stored, and how much. Border size. Readily visible menu options. All colors everywhere. Title border size. Remove "emoji" from the interface completely. Custom sounds for all events. Text or icons on menues. The list of things that USED to be normal, and are now cast in stone, is nearly endliess. That would apply to this heinously pathetic chat thing as well as VS, Office, and the entire OS itself. One size never has and never will fit all, nor will some moronic "dark" and "light" theme, or what M$ thinks "compact" should be. YOU DON'T KNOW, which patently, tragically apparent to anyone. It must even be apparent to M$, which is where I started. They. Don't. Care.

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Anonymous commented · July 09, 2019 12:53 · Flag as inappropriate

AGREED!! Please Please Please condense the app. To see contacts AND messages, TEAMS takes up over a 3rd of the monitor. WHY? Sometimes I just want to see who's online. Why can't I remove the last person's messaging real estate?

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David commented · July 09, 2019 10:45 · Flag as inappropriate

I still don't understand why we can't get a compact mode the size of the skype for business with the same UI as the iOS / Android client. The UI literally already exists for a compact mode. Make it an option then iterate on it some more.

I will say however that P2P chat expectially on desktop is bulky and cumbersome.. While replying inline to notifications is fine, composing and sending with ether a full compos or typing inline in the little box at the top of the screen is not handy, the UI in general needs to be streamlined.

One of the biggest complaints I have from users forced off of skype for business is that 1:1 chat is a giant leap backwards in usability.

Also to echo others this has been open FAR TOO LONG!

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Simon commented · July 08, 2019 13:52 · Flag as inappropriate

I totally get why the feedback for this idea would be desired but group chats in apps like Discord or WhatsApp tend to be harder to follow. I think the design challenge is how to educate users to use the 'Reply' function to keep the conversation nested against the original topic. So it might be more of an education piece to teach users how to structure the conversation.

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Jason commented · July 08, 2019 09:34 · Flag as inappropriate

We would be interested in migrating our Skype for Business users to Teams - but we have a lot of people who are primarily heavy IM users who would not like the experience of using such a large client just for chat. A compact Teams client, or compact mode within the Teams client is a "must-have" before we would consider migrating to Teams for chat.

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Ajay commented · July 04, 2019 21:49 · Flag as inappropriate

The current layout looks like Teams is designed for use on a mobile phone.
Can you please improve the web layout. The app is really great

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Anonymous commented · July 04, 2019 16:07 · Flag as inappropriate

Hurry Up

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Max commented · July 03, 2019 23:02 · Flag as inappropriate

It seems to me that the "compact mode" for Teams has been in development and without any ETA now for years. The current desktop client is dreadful in respect to pure chat. It clearly is attempting to force users to utilize Teams as a "platform service", which "can" be nice if you're into clicking around all day, logging into dozens of fancy apps because every colleague uses different applications for their task management or whatever. I was really excited when my company first started using Teams.. by now it's become more of a bother than an effective tool to get anything done.
A simple chat client pop-out would at least make communication better, but I suppose that's not the intent.

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Adriano Martins commented · July 02, 2019 16:32 · Flag as inappropriate

The chat UI is really annoying! Conversations should be placed in a pop-up. So, we could close them and keep just a compact view window.

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Anonymous commented · July 01, 2019 17:03 · Flag as inappropriate

Hurry up

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Anonymous commented · June 29, 2019 22:18 · Flag as inappropriate

How can this still be planned?! It's not rocket science. Just implement something, throw it behind a flag so people can opt in, collect feedback and iterate. Any half competent dev can do this in a week or less. How is it possible that it takes Microsoft years?! HOW?!?!

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Rob North commented · June 28, 2019 15:09 · Flag as inappropriate

If anyone is interested, I've created a CSS hack for firefox to satisfy my compact layout needs:

https://gist.github.com/robmosys/5bb51e709c71f2070cdf7d04ca2f86fd

Hope the eventual Microsoft fix is even better!

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Luis Garcia commented · June 28, 2019 13:18 · Flag as inappropriate

Still waiting x 23... And as I type this, SLACK IS CURRENTLY DOWN. Our company has resorted back to emails instead of using Teams which is included with Office 365. You hear that Microsoft? Hello? Bueller? Anyone there? They would rather use E-mail technology which is 25+ years old than use this ****** product because you guys cant get your heads out of your you know what and release AN UPDATE. WHAT IS TAKING SO LONG? NASA ALMOST FINISHED THE GEMINI MISSIONS TO PREP FOR THE MOON LANDING IN 4 YEARS!! THIS HAS BEEN ONGOING FOR 3!!!

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DiaM commented · June 27, 2019 07:40 · Flag as inappropriate

Please hurry, I don't need those pesky profile pictures next to my conversations, I need to see more content and scroll less,

Also teams is near useless unless it's full-screen, I want to be able to carry out the entire conversation in a 2x3 inch window, without having me navigate all over the place to fetch related information.

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