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.
441 comments
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Anonymous
commented
Yup, this is a pain, even after multiple "scoldings" telling people to reply and not start a new conversation, they continue to do it. The conversations need a UI thats visually distinctive and highlights that each conversation is a separate entity. Right now some of my teams there's 500 conversations that are really 4 or 5 conversations with a bunch of disjointed replies.
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Simerpreet Kaur
commented
Just combine the intuitive feel of a group chat (where people hit enter multiple times) and have the function to create a threaded reply. But I don't need my face next to every line I type, and make the "reply" line a 3-dot-menu item! The conversation thread in my teams looks so bulky! Slack is a good example to follow.
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Joel Gerhart
commented
Just make starting a new conversation a button like in the mobile version. That works perfectly.
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Mark Poole
commented
After suffering with this issue for more than a year with my team I found a solution to this problem. Switch to Slack.
Microsoft clearly does not care about their users. They seem to think features like the recently released Walkie Talkie feature is more important than this big UI issue.
Hey Satya, next year's Office subscription bucks are going to Slack. Talk to your Team team over your walkie talkie feature and let me know how clear that comes through.
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Chris McEwen
commented
Semantically, "Type a new message" is not that different from "Reply to what happens to be on your mind," if you are not semantics-obsessed. (I am but most people are not I recognize.) A better visual prompt would be "Start a brand new conversation." This would remove doubt. You can't make people read text and some people will act out of habit but for users new to Teams this would help.
For those already using Teams who have an ingrained bad habit of starting a new conversation thread for quips such as, "Huh?" or "Me too," or even the more expressive, "I like that idea," I don't know what can be done. Perhaps at the MINIMUM make the "Reply" link text bold so that it balances with the name at the top of the post.
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Stefan Doverud
commented
Would love to see this improved, it is not good as it is currently. A third column for the threaded conversation (looking at you Slack) would be awesome.
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Sabine Blackburn
commented
The last reply to this was in October, do we have an update on this? Its supposed to ship this year still?
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Jared Pittman
commented
Frustrated by this every single day. UI needs to be more intuitive for end-users.
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Sean Bolton
commented
My 200+ users all struggle with replying using reply. Our Teams channels are littered with new conversations which should have been replies.
It wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to merge conversations, but that's another vote...
As others have said, the inconsistency between the chat channel and a Team channel causes confusion.
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Martin Barbis
commented
Is there an ETA for this? It's very difficult to educate new users on using reply... seems like the default behavior for many people is to just create a new conversation and then channels become very hard to follow.
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Charlie Scott
commented
This cannot come soon enough.
It seems like the more senior you are in the business, the less you are inclined to use the 'Reply' option, and consequently the less likely you are to be told you are doing it wrong...
@Kirk Munro has explained and broken this down beautifully in his comment from December 05, 2019.
The issue here is that people are going between using the Teams Chat and the Teams Channels and often don't think twice as the same text box does different things.
As others have mentioned, the Channel text box should only display after making a conscious decision to click a 'Start new conversation' button.
I am amazed that Admins can't already tidy these messages up by moving messages where they belong.
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S K
commented
Just move "Start a new conversation" to the top and/or change it to an icon/button". Problem solved.
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Anonymous
commented
This happens CONSTANTLY in our teams, resulting in fragmented discussion threads, then people don't know which thread to respond to. Some simple UI changes could help make it easier to understand if you're replying to an existing thread or starting a new thread.
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Paul Rest
commented
I cannot believe this was brought up over two years ago and this simple UI change hasn't been made.
My work switched over to Teams six months ago and people (including myself) do this constantly.
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Kirk Munro
commented
After working with companies that don't use Teams, I'm now working with one that is just getting started and not surprisingly, this issue comes up right away. I think I know why it's such an annoying issue as well. In Teams, if you use chat to talk to someone, the conversation is automatically threaded, with your text messages on the right and text messages from whoever you are chatting with on the left. All text you enter is done in the bottom of the window. Threaded discussions on other sites (GitHub Issues, for example) work this way as well. Compare that experience with Channels in Teams, where it is natural/instinctive to enter the text you want to share with a team in the field on the bottom of the page, and unnatural to use the Reply field to reply on a specific thread, to the point that seasoned/experienced professionals who have worked in the Microsoft stack for years don't get it and need to be told how it was designed to be used (I'm sending that email now). Add to the non-intuitive UX the fact that you can't just drag and drop messages to move them to the appropriate threads in Teams, and this is really, really annoying. I'm happy to see this is being worked on, and very hopeful that you get this worked out properly.
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MyTeAmIsDrIvInGmEnUtS
commented
any update?
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Alex H
commented
I was hoping for some kind of news on this at Ignite but nothing. I hope the Engineers recognize this as one of the most common issues for users AND veterans alike.
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Nathan
commented
Suggestion: New name for your chat program, Anti-teams.
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Yunus Akaltan
commented
Can someone at least provide an update on this? This might be the most needed development on Teams at the moment.
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ITPro
commented
any update?