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
253 comments
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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.
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Pär Zebergs Brånedal
commented
I disagree on this.
Chat and Teams are not same things.
Chat are ad hoc chats
Teams are structured chats -
Dustin Massop
commented
I like teams and chat being separate but I wish that teams channels had a mechanism that behaved more like chat and less like conversations. I think this could be accomplished by being able to pin a conversation to a channel tab, so that tab would behave more like a chat but you could still see it from the conversations tab.
Another solution could be to be able to toggle the channel to have either chat, conversations, or both. -
Anonymous
commented
I still think it would be a great feature to be able to include the individual chats I have with my team members into the different teams we are part of, since switching around always takes up a lot of time.
Of course these chats would still need to be kept private and not become visible for other team members. -
Jaime Olivares
commented
I see a lot of comments saying Chats and Teams have different purposes. Some of us just want to have the possibility to see all of that without switching tabs. If it is optional, that's OK with me.
Currently I use individual chats and groups and not the Teams tab, just because switching is impractical.
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Johannes Pauls
commented
No, please not! Our Users would drive crazy, if this happens.
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Dwayne Alton
commented
I disagree with this. Chats are like IM (unthreaded). Teams messages are threaded. There are different use cases for each.
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Anonymous
commented
I don't agree with this in general, but would be fine with the option for this for groups where they would prefer this.
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Anthony Rockwell
commented
This should be configurable in the administration for the global and/or per team IMO.
We want to keep Chat private and Teams 'public' and like the two separate. However I can see the value presented here and would like the option based on how each team is using Teams. -
Emily B
commented
I'm not sure I agree with this. "Chat" is private messages and "Teams" is way more than just the Conversation tabs; they should be separate, but I'm guessing the real problem is less the switching and more that switching closes whatever you were doing. If the tab didn't reset when you switched areas, it wouldn't be such a hassle. Either the tabs need to cache what you're doing and not close your files and whatnot when you switch sections, or maybe chat needs the option of being undocked from the client so you can have individual windows for your chats and you won't have to leave the main client.
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Anonymous
commented
At minimum, the option to leave these configurable is a must.
We currently use chat for "private" messages and see the danger of having all of the communication within one tab becoming unruly for larger setups where people might be a part of multiple teams. Also, less observant users thinking they are in "chat" but posting to the main channel could pose problems.
Again, if this were to be implemented it needs to be configurable for either the user or the organization.