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.
726 comments
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Conan
commented
Hello @Alex. I'd hardly call no response for 13 months a way to 'keep you posted'. After all this time it would simply be polite to acknowledge that someone, anyone from Microsoft still has a presence in this forum. Thank you for your understanding
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Nick
commented
Is it possible the "Start a new conversation" box could be a plus sign in the top right of the Teams channel and pop up/flash screen a window to allow you to manipulate the conversation to be started in the window?
It NEEDS to be moved from the continuously scrolling feed where the reply button is almost hidden between the start a new conversation box and the conversation that has been started.
Clearly this is a hot topic and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. This is definitely a design flaw.
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Jackson Wages
commented
How is this still not done. Please fix this.
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Gerrit
commented
This is still THE biggest problem in all companies that try to use Teams. Regardless where I try to introduce Teams to a company, department or team, this bugs the people. Regardless of how big of a red screen I make this in my opening presentations, people are making this mistake. Again and again. And they are feeling stupid about it, and blame MS Teams. And this makes it really, really hard to gain acceptance for MS Teams.
It is absolutely unacceptable, that this issue is "worked on" for years now!
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Morten Ofstad
commented
Just hide the textbox and show a big ‘Start new conversation’ button. When you click it, you hide the button and show the text box. Problem solved.
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Thomas Berg
commented
In my experience the biggest problem here is that when the person you chat with adds another response, the "Reply" field actually disappears behind the "Start new conversation" field. So the only entry field you see is the one that starts another conversation.
This is what causes us to accidentally start a new conversation instead of replying.
Maybe there is an auto-scrolling option I have missed. But even without auto-scrolling the "Reply" option shouldn't be as hidden as it is now, when you are slightly scrolled up from the bottom. The mistake happens daily even after using Teams for a long time.
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Rahul Bhansali
commented
DISCLAIMER: I am self-proclaimed MSFT fanboy and occasionally get into heated debates defending MSFT. It is for the same reason I am taking the time to register my feedback here.
We recently upgraded from Flowdock to MS Teams. And I swear, I started missing FD instantly. Teams Team - Please take sometime to study their threading approach. It's the simplest design I have found to quickly navigate across multiple active threads without having to constantly scroll up and down. If there is one thing Flowdock did really well - it was their threading design. Please take the time to study it and consider that as an option as you try to solve this problem.
The world is waiting.
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Matt
commented
This is well overdue. Microsoft, just make it happen. Years to "iterate" on different designs and test internally, just not good enough.
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John Kendrick
commented
This is a huge problem with users both new and those using Teams for a while as conversations should be quick paced and not take so much thought on where to place your next thought in a thread. An easy fix in my opinion is to make the reply box an open text box, leaving start a new conversation right where it is, but use that link text to open a box to start the new conversation (like you do with the word "reply" now). If you intend to start a new thread, there is intention there, like clicking on the Compose button to start a new email, reply on the other hand should not take any effort, just type and reply in the thread.
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Anonymous
commented
People have been asking for this for THREE years, and the only reason Microsoft is now "working on it" is because of covid. Honestly embarrassing.
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Anonymous
commented
I spend an enormous amount of time asking my users to pay attention to "reply" instead of starting a new conversation. Then I end up doing to the same mistake.
PLEASE Microsoft, thousands upon thousands of users asking you to come up with a better UI or 3 years now.
It improved but it's still a huge issue! -
Celia Cox
commented
Is there an update to this problem?
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Angelo Dalli
commented
Can I further suggest that each thread can be potentially assigned a title and starred / pinned to a channel?
In an ideal world the title can be intelligently auto-suggested from an analysis of the thread messages themselves but it will not be a big deal to type it in manually. The UI can then display the pinned threads under each channel, sort of like folders in a directory display for easy access.
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Caleb
commented
This is a perfect example of what’s wrong with Microsoft. They’ve said for three 3ys that this will ship soon... and nothing. This is not a hard technical problem to solve. I’m honestly confused at why it takes them so long. Politics?
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Caleb
commented
Update please?
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Eu Gene Lim
commented
Have you thought of having discussion forums / threads instead of group chat?
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John Hagerman
commented
This is a horrid UI. I chided someone for starting a new conversation -- and then did it myself two minutes later. The fact that the Reply box can disappear while the new conversation box does not makes conversations nearly unusable. All of threading is poorly conceived. Please fix!
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Jonathan
commented
Just adding my voice to the thousands. I almost daily need to remind users to click "Reply" instead of "Start a new conversation". Even after reminding so many others, I also find myself occasionally typing in a new conversation box when I meant to be replying to a post. The two options are so close together when scrolled all the way to the bottom of a channel that it's very easy to simply click the wrong thing. Please fix this!
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Anonymous
commented
Hello - this is still a massive UI issue and, frankly, done far more effectively in slack. Please address this.
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Sebastian
commented
Sometimes the 'reply' button gets hidden, only the 'start a new conversation' is showing untill the user scrolls down