Make "Teams" and "Chat" the same Tab
There is no reason that Teams and Chat should be different top level categories in the left navigation. They are the same thing, perform exactly the same function, and making two different items simply confuses the navigation and makes badge notifications and discoverability much more difficult to use.
Please combine Chats into the Teams tab so that you can browse all conversations in one place rather than needing to navigate to different tabs to see different conversations.
Chats and channels perform essentially the same function, which is talk to some people and collaborate. Forcing the user to check two different lists to see if somebody is messaging them is a really bad experience, it is like having two different chat apps.
This is one usability issues that makes Teams less usable for collaboration than both Slack and Skype.
Samuel Sze
shared this idea
This feature is still being reviewed by the feature team. No decision has been made yet. I’ll keep you posted.
-Warren
263 comments
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Ahobart
commented
i disagree, because i can chat with people outside my team but in my organization.. I don't want to have to find a team we're both in to chat with them.. having a chat window inside the team where all team members are instantly chat contacts on top of the existing chat however would be cool
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Anonymous
commented
I disagree. If combining the was a user choice then that might work. It's very obvious when someone communicates to me as a chat or Team. I don't Teams is less collaborative and it assist me in the way I work. Combining it would be a mistake and potentially put people of adopting it fully.
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Morgan Gilreath
commented
Disagree on this, 1:1 or 1:many chats are totally different from Teams. Stored in different places, chats don't get SP/mailbox/etc, file sharing is different
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Lucie Labbé
commented
I disagree too, the différences are too big to put both together!
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Arthur Dumont
commented
I disagree on this too. Chats are more one-on-one conversations and/of conversations with colleagues about different topics. The chat in Team channels are for collaboration in the Team to discuss and inform all Team members. With other words not all chats are related to a Team/Channel.
Browsing all conversations in one place is an other request, I think.
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Jodi Kleist
commented
I disagree on this too. Chat and Teams are not same thing and there is no reason for them to be combined.
Chats are typically personal one-on-one conversations. Teams are for conversations regarding a specific project or topic and can be viewed by everyone in the team.
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Petter Johansson
commented
WARREN what's the current status, this is driving me nuts!
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Todd Edwards
commented
Can we please get an update on this. Last update was over a year ago
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Varinder
commented
Totally agree. It is very annoying to switch between Teams and Chats tabs. I like Slack's layout better
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RUSTAM MIFTAKHUTDINOV
commented
This makes so much sense
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Silvio Pellas
commented
This is the only thing holding us back on replacing Slack.
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Nabil
commented
Slack has had this feature since the get go and is one of my favorite features about it, no navigating sub-hierarchcal structures just to get to the conversations I care about.
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Matthias Bartosik
commented
I think what the poster actually wants is to be able to filter/view "Conversations" in the Feed - just view all conversations, sorted by latest update (and no duplicate entries), regardless if they are private or from some channel in some team.
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Oliver
commented
Grrrr, there is an option to delete "Chats" in a Team if it's enabled by the administrator... But there is no Option to delete individual "Chats" or Conversation between Users which are not in a Group/Team... I can only hide messages or conversations... I want to delete them.
I'm answering here, because i found no thread about this problem/idea...
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Alex Carlock commented
If anything, this should be a personal setting. I see chats as mostly 1:1 conversations with people that aren't always relevant to team work. Team chats are relevant for everyone on the team to see. So to me, it makes sense to keep these separate.
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Mesbah
commented
I completely agree. The fact there is disagreement in the comments means that this should be a customizable feature. But for my organization, people use chats and group chats instead of "Teams", and the separation makes it frustrating to keep switching between the two.
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Gerrit
commented
I disagree on this. Chatting works differently in "Chat" and "Teams". In "Chat" you have something like WhatsApp, which is easily described to non-techy-colleagues. In "Teams" you need to have a bit more discipline to hit "Reply" and get used to the thread-based "chatting".
Keeping that separated makes it lot easier to train colleagues.
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Anonymous
commented
I disagree on this. Chat is used in the same way we used Skype. in the moment private type conversations, while Teams is more structured opened to anyone in the Team or channel
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[Deleted User]
commented
Chat should be global/universal regardless of organization (so people are easy to reach).
Teams should be structured for target organization only.
Basically Chat should be _more_ generalized so if you work with a multi-org environment you can still have ad-hoc chats no matter what org you are focusing on at the moment. -
Mike
commented
I believe Chat and Teams are separate entities, but I hate the sense of "separate" when switching between the two top levels. When going from Teams to Chat, the entire app and status has to refresh which makes it seem less "seamless". There should be a way to create a "dashboard" where I could combine Chat and Teams into one pane if I so choose, or keep them separate. I don't like the clunkiness of having to swtich between the two as I am normally Chatting and glancing at Teams. We use Tab's within channels to organize tasks and planning and it would be nice if you could chat while being able to view these tabs in the channels instead of switching back and forth.