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.

Thank you for all your responses to the design survey. The survey is now closed.
1757 comments
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Anonymous commented
Agree - we were forced to switch from Skype to Teams. Skype was a focused chat and calling app - unobtrusive designed to do two things right. Teams is a clunky kitchen sink with too much junk in it. Teams wants to dominate your screen instead being a utility. I don't mind having Teams "under the hood" but at least create small user interfaces which can be used as small pop-ups.
Michael
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Anonymous commented
Probably the mentally handicapped were involved in designing this application. 4-6 GB and 6 cores are harnessed for simple chat - congratulations.
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Anonymous commented
Display configuration is overly ridiculous and useless. Chat list gets really cluttered with the display of the last message in addition to the persons' names and this MUST be made configurable. The way group chats are managed is hugely stupid - by default you create a new chat and not post a message in the same chat and clone the discussion into threads only when needed. Why can't you just copy Slack. Imagine that, Teams is worse than the free Skype (which is utterly ridiculous). I can't even believe that there can be a worse-organised, user-unfriendly, and inflexible tool than free Skype. MAKE TEAMS MORE PROFESSIONAL!!!!!
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Anonymous commented
Yes! We need the chats to be in opened in one window, exactly as Skype does today. I can have all my chats visible/assessible separately without closing down a meeting to read new incoming chats.
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MS Feedback commented
This is another one of those things that is coming back to bite you MS. You ignored the concurrent camera requests for too long as well and that back fired, causing MANY clients to switch to Zoom. Now we have business units saying they will flat out abandon Teams because their i5/8GB machine is not powerful enough to run it. It even pushes my i7/16GB system to its limit upon launch and heavy use. To bloaty if all someone is using it for is chat and calling. Lite client or at the very least lite mode is essential. Good luck getting non profits to adopt with their much slower systems.
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Edgar Chavez commented
It's been almost 4 years since this was requested... still nothing? smh
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Anonymous commented
Sorry, but it's ridiculous to have a chat app opened to almost full screen, just to see the chat info.
You got over 18k votes on this feature, when is it going to be added? -
bypegg commented
Yes, Mark M! All, please see the following request/suggestion and vote for it if you agree - "Ability to Popout Entire Main Chat screen/menu & control size of the Popped out screen"
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Mark Moore commented
One solution that could satisfy everyone is, instead of having the underwhelming (stop with the MVP's all the time, go for MAP) "chat popout", make it an option to have the whole chat tab "dock" and undock" from Teams totally. Those just wanting Chat could undock it permanently and minimise the main app to system tray, whilst others could choose to keep it "docked" with the main app for 90% of the time
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Mark Moore commented
@brian - No issues with people wanting compact mode, and "yes, for those that just want chat, Teams is overkill", but "Yes, serious companies all over the world want this and have been using it successfully for over 3 years." A lot of comments I see on here about this are "tunnel vision" based on just one piece of functionality rather than the whole. From a collaboration perspective, Teams is awesome
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Brian commented
Anyone asking for this? No. Are they still shoving it down our throats? Yes.
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Brian commented
Teams is an absolute mess. Way too much jammed into a program trying to be a more complicated version of Discord. I just need a chat function, is anyone actually asking for all of this fluff and over production? Where is the widget for this thing? I don't need another brick of an application sprawled out over the workspace.
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Anonymous commented
The bigger problem is, they are doing this to virtually all of their products. I have stopped using Microsoft Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook, Whiteboard, and been contemplating Windows10 even. I've had enough.
Of course, our company just switched over to Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, and this has severely negatively impacted our ability to do our job because of its horrendous design implementation. Employees are literally getting fired because they can't, or won't, use it. It's ridiculous.
Microsoft, we beg of you, enough with this "more padding, please" nonsense. You've gone overboard. You cannot afford the kind of mass exodus that can happen overnight when people band together to make a statement. Do something.
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Madison commented
as a student, it gets kind of confusing with so much on the screen.
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Anonymous commented
This is the worst possible app ever. it is like being beaten to death every day and coming back for more, nothing in that window is ever used, lots of empty space and 3 freakin chat messages, please go back in time and copy the ICQ window, done, thanks bye.
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PETE THOMPSON commented
This is a problem, especially in lockdown. If you plan to remove business skype support many will choose another vendor. This needs to be lighter.
My daughters laptop which is mainly used for cloud but fairly new can barely use teams and docs at the same time,
This day and age, programming should try to be more efficient, not bulky. -
Darrell Jones commented
My company is moving from Skype for Business to Teams and I will need to have a separate monitor to have teams on it because I will not be able to fit it to my current layout and still work.
This request has been open nearly 4 years and has nearly 18000 votes at time of writing. We are also in the middle of a pandemic that is forcing everyone to communicate by apps far more than they did before. Under such circumstances having the worst UI of any messaging app is a real badge of shame. Sort it out.
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Somebody commented
This is an example of greediness, Under Review, working, Feedback need, partially done, maybe not? nah, we will not make anything
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Rui Almeida commented
This kind of anti-feature is absolutely ridiculous. This is such an horrible product that it only survives because it gets traction from other more locked-in products.
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Mark Moore commented
Whilst I don't disagree with many of the comments on here, it strikes me that a huge number oof people simply have not got their head around what Teams is, the chat functionality is NOT the primary feature of Teams, though if you are moving from SfB I could see why you might think that. So its not a 1 size fits all solution because they need to cater for all the functionality within teams in terms of sizes. If you are using a mail client more than teams conversations, you are not using it effectively, if you are not using the files and tabs of channels to work quicker and more collaboratively, you are not using Teams effectively ... chat is just 1 function of teams