Option for Passive voice channels.
As an avid gamer, I feel like we gamers are very good at collaboration.
I would like to have a voice channel much like to see a passive voice channel where your team members can join and passively talk to each other as they work Much like how discord or team speak works in addition to what already exist in teams. This also will break up the monotony of needing excessive Skype meetings. For people whom work in the department, but are Geographically separated, and cant getup from their desk to just ask a teammate a simple question.
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66 comments
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Tim Nagels
commented
We even had some requests to set up passive Video channels for dispersed teams.
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C Pomeroy
commented
Very important in this age of work from home. It's a virtual break area or casual conversations that team members can hop in/out of. I would add, this should be voice and video as an option.
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Eric Raposo
commented
Its key to have the ability to see the users in the channel. Also it would be cool if you could setup your teams status such that anyone could hop in to talk to you (just like when someone walks by your desk). Possibly with a limit of 1 or 2 people, like a personal "desk" channel.
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Merse
commented
Yes this would be a great feature - I would like to create a virtual 'Kitchen' so you can pop in when you go to make a coffee.
This would replicate the informal conversations we used to have when you bump into somebody in the kitchen IRL.
At the moment we are all siloed into Teams for project or function with no means to just drop in anywhere. Please make this happen, how hard can it be...? :)
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Erica Williams
commented
+1
My company is looking for something like this. This is the only feature lacking for us and it would be a total game changer.
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Adam Thomas
commented
Would make setting up meeting faster too, just jump into the passive voice channel. If you wish to be extra about it you could set it up so only those added to it can see/join it or make it open to all in the group/channel.
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David
commented
Really happy to see I'm not the only one looking for a discord-like (or Ventrilo-like if you're really cool :p) voice channel!! This feature would really making working from home feel a lot more like you're in the office (where you can often just talk a little louder and reach someone in the next cubical/office over) and I think would be a Game Changer for the work-from-home atmosphere and collaboration space.
Personally, I would like to see this as an option to enable/disable on a per channel basis so it's a supplementary tool to any current organizations/projects/groups, rather than a separate feature. I suppose a first step could be a separate group chat that you could join, but having the per-channel granularity would be stellar.
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Alex Spieslechner
commented
especially now a lot of teams miss the casual "watercooler talks". unplanned discussions you can join and leave at any time, for some socializing.
at our corp, we use discord to fill that gap, and we all feel like its a shame that we have to use another software for that. our main communication tool otherwise is teams.
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Anonymous
commented
+1 Yes, otherwise I have to maintain separate discord channel plus MS Teams
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@mtay
commented
Since my Team shifted to remote work back in March 2019 - we have been scheduling a recurring meeting every morning called "Lobby". It works, and I keep it pinned to the top of my chat pane, but the Meeting interface lacks many of the features you get in a Teams channel.
Having a dedicated channel and using the "meet now" option has an extra step... and as dumb as it sounds, I think 1) having the extra step adds just enough friction to stop people from "popping" into voice chat like you can with a Discord voice channel and 2) not getting a notification or having visibility from the Teams Activity pane about who is active in the Meet Now also keeps people from utilizing it.
A Discord-style voice channel option would just be more useful for us in our new normal. We have some workarounds for now - but this is a feature I wish the Teams engineering team would seriously consider implementing.
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Eugene
commented
This is a must have! This works great in Discord and will be very useful in Teams to use at work for quick calls.
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Daniel
commented
+1
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Mantas Lukosevicius
commented
Are there yet really no plugins even ??? found this old forum and hoped for a solution in two years.
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Henrik Svensson
commented
I agree, this is a must have.
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Nick
commented
This is the only feature missing for my team right now on Teams. We currently have our remote work divided across Slack, Discord, Clickup and Google. If passive voice channels (like Discord) were implemented I would move us over to Teams in a heartbeat.
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Raimund Steger
commented
Voting this UP. I suspect one could emulate this with a recurring meeting but it just seems clunky and cumbersome.
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Derek
commented
I now work remotely as a business analyst and would use a feature like this as a virtual office that users could stop in with small questions. This would greatly reduce the volume of emails I receive while also allowing me to better service my user’s needs. Honestly, as others have stated, this one feature addition would increase the value of Teams in my organization more than anything else.
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DBA
commented
Totally agree
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brett
commented
Completely agree on this. for this "new normal" of working from home, this will work very well and differentiate Teams from other applications.
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Max
commented
If I am working on something but still want to be open for questions or discussions with team members, I would love to just hang out in a voice channel. This is the equivalent of walking over to someone's cube and saying, "Whats up", or running into them in the cafe. I cant express how much this informal collaboration has resulted in productive work getting done and how helpful it is to bounce ideas off people in an adhoc setting. Please implement this ASAP.