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
The team has not made a decision on whether to move forward with this feature. We will update when we have new status to share.
472 comments
-
Viaj
commented
If you do implement this, ensure you allow users to toggle this behaviour. Personally, this would make an already crowded pane even worse.
-
Michael Hill
commented
Would really like to see this. Far too easy for messages to get lost otherwise. Seems that most other chat clients support this feature, so plenty of examples should exist.
We are historically a primarily "Chat"-based group and are trying to transition to channels in order to provide public forums for specific business areas. Keeping the "Chat" and "Teams" areas separate raises the UX barrier for this transition. We would like to see a single scrollable pane which includes all chats and channels.
-
Paul
commented
My company is split between Webex Teams and MS Teams so I need to run both in order to communicate with everyone. I'm much more likely to miss messages from people in MS Teams because of this issue. I just don't notice that someone has sent me a message until hours or days later. I know some people have noticed that if they send me a message in MS Teams and I don't respond they can send me the same message in Webex Teams and I'll notice their message and reply right away.
-
Anonymous
commented
I like the ability to show pinned channels in the chat section (this is on the mobile app). But I disagree with combining chats & teams. They serve two completely different functions. And if you're apart of multiple teams in your company - then the merging of the two would be crazy difficult to manage. I can see it now ...
-
Waylon Covil
commented
Or create a Posts Icon which aggregates all of the Posts in Teams Channels.
That way, the one to one and meeting chats are in chats, and users can simply go to the Posts icon to see their Posts from the Teams Channels. -
Esbjörn Larsen
commented
This must be fixed. We can't make use of chats in our organization because of this annoyance. We teach our users to avoid chats at ALL COST. Whoever designed Teams must have had a really bad day to separate these.
-
kurlywhirlygurly
commented
I agree with everyone! this is so painful to have them split that I pine for Webex chat (ack!) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE merge these two. there is absolutely no reason to them separated.
maybe even if it's just a setting or option for some users...?
-
Allen
commented
please address this - messages in teams get lost. there's no reason to have both instead of just nesting chats under the teams
-
Anonymous
commented
This is the most painful thing of using Microsoft team.
-
[Deleted User]
commented
This is one of the largest pains of using Teams coming from Slack. The need to go back and forth between Teams and Chats makes it really annoying to check for new messages, where in Slack everything was organized in one view.
-
Scott
commented
as pointed out by others, simply replicating the mobile functionality of allowing pinned chats and channels in the same place would be a significant enhancement.
-
Jim
commented
Being able to add a chat tab to the top of any channel that includes all those in the channel would be helpful
-
Ali
commented
Please move forward with this feature! Also please allow us to pin more than 15 chats!
-
Sebastian
commented
This is the most frustrating part of using Teams. People miss chats because of this. We need them to be unified or allow pinned channels to appear in the main list.
-
FS
commented
As poinited out by Cisco (and others before), if the desktop App at least had the same option as the mobile one (to show pinned Channels in the Chat tab) it would be a significant improvement for the countless number of users who are tired of switching a hundred times per day between Chat and Teams tabs.
Those two tabs have slightly different purposes but most users need to interact with both, everyday, the full day.Which is even more frustrating because you can't pop-out a Channel as you do with a Chat.
-
Dominik
commented
Please do something with this - maybe try to work with Teams and it will become natural step :)
-
Cisco
commented
At the very least, can you please mirror the mobile experience and allow us to display pinned channels in the chat section.
-
Anonymous
commented
Can we get an update from you Microsoft? Is this feature going to be implemented?
-
Dominic Stenson
commented
This is a MAJOR oversight from Microsoft! Once again, this shows how they are developing to their own vision and NOT listening to their user base. The experience between chats and teams channels is dreadful and because MS have chosen not to act on this, I'm not surprised that people are flocking over to Slack! Just give the option to create a chat group from a team, give ALL of the same connectors and let us get the system that we deserve. We pay more than enough through licencing!
-
John Porter
commented
All chats should appear under the "Chat" tab. Currently, if creating a meeting from a channel, all chat during those meetings goes to the "Posts' tab in that channel but does not show up in the "Chat" tab. This is causing all sorts of confusion for my teams, who post questions or links and then cannot figure out where they went.