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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.

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Samuel Sze shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →

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  • Brad commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This (and alpha-sorting chats) are the biggest improvements you could make to Teams

  • Smruti commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    @Alex H,
    Can Microsoft do proper Use case analysis on the usage of Chat and Teams. In reality operationally people use Chat implicitely as the context of the issue would be different all the time and stakeholders are different.

    Once Chat started and relevant people added to work on this, there would be need to update on standard Teams and get update from them. So working team and remote Teams bound to be separate. In SFB both are new chat and new windows hence no issue as we can tab into different windows easily.

    Here in Teams you do not have the ability to POPOUT any conversation in Teams or Chats to have same effect. Can this be done at least at the earliest before people stop using Teams for this kind of critical matters.

  • Smruti commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This is a bare minimum feature. Not sure what MS Feature team is thinking still since 2018 on it. This is basic feature to start with. Without this Teams is not operationally ready for Business operation handling in BG scale. May be good for just chats!!!

    Skype For Business is much better.

  • Kelly Atkinson commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Can we get an update on this, please? I am missing items and wasting time by having to go back and forth between teams and chats. Other coworkers just can't get this figured out and post in one when they should be using the other. There's a real opportunity here to improve the UI - please try some ideas out and change this!

  • Alex H commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Disagree on this one too. Chat and Team conversations are different in how they work and combining them into a single page may only confuse users with how to engage in a discussion.

    I would rather the dev team focus on flushing out and cleaning up the Team Conversation experience. Too many people treat it as a chatroom already by starting new conversations instead of replying.

  • Vincent Rousseau commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I disagree on this idea. Channel are for sharing with the team group (more than one person). Chats are for one-to-one discussions (ok maybe three or four people occasionally).

  • Aaron Johnstone commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Please make chats and teams accessible from the same screen. Having to go back and forth is a huge waste of time.

  • Jack Smith commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    This has been under review for over a year. It's a massive ease-of-use update to allow us to view private chats and team chats in one area. Given how there's no indication of unread chats in the Teams section while in the chat section, you're just supposed to magically know, or at least go back and check the Teams section from time to see if you've missed any chats vs just having it be all in one place and making anything unread bold to indicate you've missed something. This really is quite a productivity killer. Any other chat program (IRC, Slack, Discord, ICQ, AIM, etc...) consolidates them into one so you can see all your unreads without having to context switch. Please for the love of god at least let us know that this is going to be implemented at some point. Right now, using teams is a huge drag and it's only convenient because it comes with O365 licenses vs using Slack which costs an arm and a leg.

    Additionally, anyone who says "disagree" or "don't do this" clearly doesn't understand what the OP is trying to say because there's nobody that could ever logically agree with the ridiculous amount of inconvenience this is, unless they've literally never used anything else but Teams ever to chat.

  • Payden Kress commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Please don't do this. As others have said, the chat tab allows for private chats with one or more people without broadcasting to the entire team.

  • Richard Cross commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    While there are separate use cases for both teams and chat. The context switch is VERY annoying, involving a full page refresh. Also sometimes i start a chat, but wish I could split it off into a separate conversation thread (right click on first message - move messages to team). Or invite others to that chat making a new team conversation at the same time. Having a dashboard with pinned conversations and chats would be simple way to help with the issue.

  • Ahobart commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    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

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    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.

  • Morgan Gilreath commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    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

  • Arthur Dumont commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    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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