Thread subject and focusing on a thread
When viewing a channel, it would be nice to be able to select a thread (within the channel) to focus/expand on. Sometimes the threads can get long, and distinguishing between one thread and another can be difficult. If you could select a thread and have it expand the thread so that it is the sole focus of the window, that would be nice. See Zulip for an example of how this is done well. The fact that each thread has a subject/title is very nice, as well. It is a clear/logic separation of conversations within a channel.

7 comments
-
Leslie Wagner commented
Please help make this happen! Of course we can 'search' in channel but it's messy and we need a cleaner solution. I love teams and am super happy using it with our project teams!
-
Chris Schuyler commented
Yes, as we've onboarded users to Teams, people continue the thread conversation in the main chat area (e.g. the conversation is across multiple threads).
As people get used to it, it gets better, but people still make the mistake of using the wrong text entry box (not ideal UX?).
This isolation already exists on Mobile, and it would be great if the desktop app was able to do the same.
While this is related to the multiple windows feature, for those that like the single unified window, I think supporting the "popping a conversation out" wouldn't be good enough. -
John Patton commented
It would be nice if the presentation of threads was in a sidebar to avoid confusion with the main channel discussions... it would allow me to create a thread that could be referenced without causing a huge pileup of discussion in the main channel. we're constantly getting confused about which thread is current and folks tend to reply in wrong threads because they keep shifting in the main channel based on last reply. Not to bring slack into the picture, but slack does this very well.
-
Sean Ellis commented
This is closely related to the more general separate-windows idea here: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/16926739-multi-window-for-chats-and-more
-
Paul Montag commented
I would love if this functionality existed. I find the threading a great idea in a channel but it is easy to loose where things were, especially considering threads are jumping around in the channel as people add to them. Because of this I find myself in the "Activity" section most of the time. It would be great if the activity channel opened up this "Thread View" when selected instead of scrolling in the channel to where it is. This would also allow the whole thread to show instead of having it collapsed by default.
-
Carmelo Migliore commented
Alternatively, a solution would be to have a left panel with the list of threads of the channel. You could simply browse this list and select the thread you want to focus on.
-
Mick Herres commented
Oddly, this functionality does seem to be there, but hidden and only partially exposed. If you perform a search and click on any result other than the first result, it displays only the conversation that search result came from with a link back to the full channel.
Would be great if this functionality was pulled forward in the desktop client. It's already there in the mobile client and works great.