Better visual delineation between `Reply` and `Start a new conversation`
It's very confusing to new users that there is a difference between replying to an existing conversation and starting a new one within a channel. This is a visual thing as much as anything else. The 'reply' buttons are not naturally attractive if you just want to start typing a message. There should be a logical gap between the bottom of a conversation and 'start a new conversation'. 'Start a new conversation' needs to be separated visually, as if it's a second order command rather than a first order...reply.
Stephen Ellis
shared this idea
We have been iterating on different designs and are starting to test internally. I don’t have a timeframe but will keep you posted.
419 comments
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Kaleb Commers
commented
In the meantime, this also seems like it would be super beneficial: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/32192524-option-to-move-copy-a-reply-to-another-or-new-conv
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Kerry
commented
Totally agree, much like this forum. to start a new conversation you need to start in a window at the top. to continue in an existing conversation you have to click reply to open up a box to type in to reply to the previous comment.
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Colin
commented
Absolutely agree with the other recent comments: discussions are lost and fragmented because people (even experienced IT people and developers) accidentally start a new conversation instead of hitting the Reply button/link. Some of these are obviously intended to be replies, like "Yes, let's do it that way.". That has ZERO MEANING as a new conversation, but makes perfect sense as a reply. I like Greg Ewing's suggestion of making the Reply look more like a text entry area. It should be just as easy (maybe easier) to respond to an existing thread than to start a new one. Currently it requires an extra click, which subtly discourages replying (we all naturally go to the text entry field and start typing).
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Greg Ewing
commented
One simple possible solution for this would be to make the Reply button at the bottom of each thread look more like a text entry field before it gets clicked on ?
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Marcus Diddle
commented
Please fix this, as quickly as possible. I fear for the safety of some of my coworkers because of this very issue...
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Matthew Parowski
commented
Oh my goodness gracious yes. In my organization, it seems to be the most senior people who constantly try to reply to messages but spawn new threads. Politely correcting them doesn't fix their behavior either; the UI has to be improved. Maybe starting a new conversation could be a BUTTON rather than an all-too inviting TEXT BOX.
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Christo Greeff
commented
The amount of confusion due the lack of this feature is immense. This should have more votes.
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Chris C
commented
Michael Wood's comment on October 15, 2019 would be an awesome improvement.
If the bottom text box to start a new conversation wasn't always visible, it would be much harder for people to do this on accident.
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Maria Mathiesen
commented
I support this change.
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David R
commented
Everyone in our team does this all the time. It should be fixed already!! Poor design allowed to develop in to a hatred for the app. Every time someone goes "Argh" you loose them a little.
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Olivia D
commented
Could something similar to what is pictured be implemented?
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Shawn Fielding
commented
Yeah, I start a new thread by accident all the time and have to delete it. It would be really nice. Heck a sinlge <HR/> would do it.
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Sébastien
commented
Can this be implemented quickly? Colleagues are missing answers to important messages, just because the answer got lost in separate conversations.
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Alexander Häckner commented
Any updates / movement on this? The GUI for this is extremely counterintuitive, when you fall into the trap of posting a new conversation by mistake instead of replying, happening on a daily basis, even after many months of use. It is not even a question of learning the habit. It is simply a case of the design being so unintuitive and confusing, that it encourages you to make a mistake.
A simple fix would be to make the design for Desktop more similar to the Android version. The reply fields on Android are easily distinguishable per thread, and "Start new conversation" is a separate button. You then need to click before the new conversation text field shows up, and then you avoid confusing the fields.
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Marcelo Felman
commented
+1. This could be a game changer in Teams adoption. It's really annoying to see users create new threads every single time they intend to reply to an existing one.
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Ryan Spooner
commented
So, you were testing internally 6 months ago in April, after previously saying we'd have it before Christmas, then after new year, now it's 10 months later. Any movement on this yet?
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Wojciech
commented
Little suggestion from my side - to hide the existing "Start a new conversation" bar, and add a new button for creating a new message, which would expand the bar back. Hopefully, everyone would then first look for a way to reply to existing threads, and then, thanks to one additional click, would start a truly new conversation.
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Michael Wood
commented
Simple as this... This is desperately needed
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Jeff
commented
The group chat feature is great in Teams because there is no reply option and it works like how we all know a group chat should work. I would suggest making each channel have a setting that you can enable/disable replies as you wish on each channel. This allows teams to choose the way that works best for them and if you do not want to allow replies you don't have to as they just make the channel chat extremely messy for my team.
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Brad Kanther
commented
be awesome to be able to "enforce a subject heading" in the conversation settings.(this could solve the delination prbolem)
Be even more awesome when typing this "enforced subject heading" it shows other subject headings that already exist based on what your are typing?
p.s since there seems to be no chance of anyone creating a "forums" app in teams!
