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.
663 comments
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Anonymous
commented
c'mon with nearly 7000 votes & still not done? suggest you go for a simple interim solution (like the suggested super-simple SOLID LINE), while your team is working on the perfect solution... what would be the harm in that? but please no more of these "still being worked on", "making good headway", "still in the works", "will start shipping soon". at least be real, pls and thank you.
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Andrew
commented
Just adding my voice to this. Forget about the other pointless upgrades, this is a real problem with the interface and leads to a lot of "noise" in channels when stuff is not kept within existing conversations.
Seriously, please consider this issue, with 6900 votes to be important. -
Garrett Nelson
commented
I can't believe it has been over a year and this hasn't been solved yet.
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Carolyn Gaither
commented
Even a thick bold line dividing Reply from Start new would help
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Jonny
commented
We've turned this into a feature. Whenever somebody starts a new conversation instead of replies to a thread (which happens several times a day for our team), we all post reaction gifs and keep that thread alive forever. We sometimes even forget about the original thread and just keep the failed reply alive instead. Very fun (not super productive). +1 to fixing this.
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Phil Ellis
commented
Teams is getting adopted by a lot of places now, and this function is massively broken, I think a lot of places start using teams as a replacement for Skype for Business, so they start with the chat features which allow you to talk to multiple people by entering text into the large bottom text box.
The problem with Channels is that box starts a new conversation, not replying to existing conversations, it takes a lot of getting used to. If you get a notification that someone has posted a new message in a channel clicking on that notification takes you to the channel only, I think it might be more ideal to take you to the reply dialog instead of new conversation. I'd say everyone in our office starts a new conversation when they intended to reply, so it's clearly not intuitive to many. There are so many other instances of this being done right: Discord, Slack, other web based systems. I don't get why this isn't a higher priority. -
Jeff Smith
commented
Can we please get an update on this. There has been nothing for over a year after comments stating that it would be released in 2018. So many of the changes being pushed through on a regular basis are ridiculous compared to this fundamental issue not being fixed already.
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Patrick Szalapski
commented
It would be a very easy tweak to just shift the "Start a conversation" bar left so that it left-aligns with the avatar images.
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Mark
commented
This is more than an annoyance, it is detrimental to productivity. We recently started a division-wide Teams channel for incident response, with the idea that people start a discussion when an incident happens so everyone can see it and jump on to work on a solution. Whenever there are multiple incidents happening simultaneously, people's "new conversations" (that were meant to be replies to a discussion) all get mixed together and it becomes impossible to tell what they are responding to. These are otherwise intelligent professionals, many of whom know the correct way use this feature, but still make the mistake. It's a big problem.
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Gaizka Ugalde
commented
A good example is meets chat og google. I do not like in many aspects but it has a clear definition for reply and new conversation. In my opinion there ate 2 main key points
1) The thread of the conversation is inside a visual container
2) By default you reply the last conversation. You need click in "start new conversation" to start a new one.
3) And let me say that I would add a tittle to the thread!! -
BBG
commented
I know 2 programmers who built an awesome app and website for database management in a few months. How can a whole MS team take so long to fix a broken UI? Even a small CSS fix would help.
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Joel Mathew
commented
I find Slack's UX for "Threads" in conversations (equivalent to "Replies" in Team's channel conversation) a particularly effective way of separating a new message from a reply to an existing message. I would encourage to learn, adapt, and improve upon what Slack already does for Teams Channel conversations.
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Life Behind Bars
commented
Dear Teams team, please pay closer attention to RDJ's warnings. You went full ******. You never go full ******.
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ITPro
commented
still waiting... the worst part is, even if you are aware of how to distinguish the two, people, including myself still start new posts instead of replying. It's just bad UI design. Just copy facebook, no need to re-invent the wheel.
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Martin Joseph
commented
I have been at 2 companies over the last year as both started using Teams and tried to champion the use of the application. Tthis is by far the biggest annoyance to using Teams for conversations.
I have gotten frustrated being the only person in the company to nicely remind people the difference between Reply and Start a new conversation that I know feel like a nag and it doesn't make me want to push use of the tool
I really can't wait for the new UI/Ux model
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CK
commented
100% agree! People get this wrong constantly.
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Mauno
commented
We need an option to disable threads completely in channels until you find a better solution the chats are just so messy with people starting new threads left and right.
I still do it myself by accident all the time because of the UI is what it is. -
Hash Milhan
commented
Oh wow, they have been working on this for a year now!
This reply/start conversation is such an annoying UX issue. Really needs to be fixed!
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J W
commented
Agree.
We were in a video meeting earlier today and a user posted a screenshot in the meeting chat.
However, another user who this screenshot was directed at, has issues with seeing this.The issue is that the user was viewing full screen video, but did not understand how to:
a) View/access the Channel where the Meeting was held
b) View/access the Meeting conversation thread (where the screenshot was embedded)I just think the way the chat is arranged and thus how you use it, is not clear. A few points:
a) Clicking reply to a collapsed conversation does not reveal the entire conversation! How are you meant to know what was last said?
b) A conversation will indicated how many replies there are in a very small font, but it's not obvious for users to click this to expand the conversation. It's not signposted well enough. At least give it a different colour and/or shaded box, or add a + sign or icon. It's just not obvious for users!
c) The horizontal bar at the top of a channel that displays: Posts, Files, Planner, Wiki etc is again not obvious enough! During meetings I have problems with getting other users in finding something like the Planner if we need to discuss our schedules! Maybe a more differentiating colour for the bar? but I understand how custom Team pictures/icons could clash. Maybe the Team picture/icon and the name of the channel is on a different line instead of mashed together on one line. That way you can add the channel description at the top, makes it more intuitive for users! (this UI is already implemented when you right click a channel and select the 'manage channel' setting - just copy that, maybe separate with a different colour between lines). I do think the spacing between each element, such as Posts, Planner, Files are too close to each other aswell.
We are new to using Teams (brought about because of the Coronavirus issue, so working from home) but we are finding Teams is a powerful tool, but not very intuitive. It's especially difficult for some of our users who are not used using applications beyond Outlook and Office.
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Anonymous
commented
Working on it for over a year?