Game-Changer – Microsoft Teams Review

UPDATE 2022: I mostly still enjoy the productivity and ease of communication this app allows, but they ALSO still have not fixed that extremely annoying copy/paste bug. Pasting from an external source (something other than Teams) into a drafted message completely messes with the text unless you specifically only paste at the very end of the message. If I type out something and want to amend the top line to have a subject or additional info I copied from a notes app, website, or email, Teams just cannot handle it. I like how Teams handles video meetings, audio conferences, visual presentations, subject-organized threads for different departments and team members, name-tagging to grab peoples’ attention, setting messages as urgent, live-editing/deleting of sent messages to fix mistakes, built-in GIFs, etc. But that darn copy/paste bug has been the bane of my workflow. I essentially can’t draft anything inside Teams unless it’s very simple. The only other easy but extremely useful feature would be listed formatting. My job entails a lot of information communication, and bubbled/numbered lists make things so much easier to digest and navigate. I’d love to have them as a formatting option in Teams just like it is in Outlook on mobile. Original Review: Makes work possible. We have so many things to manage that it would be impossible to organize communication for various project categories without something like Teams. The best features are the chat rooms and threads, because sending quick files and pictures is speedy and easy on the go. Meetings are great too, because the calendar shows times/topics and allows a quick-join via notification when someone starts the meeting (even if it’s a few minutes late, so you’re not wasting time in an empty conference). Adding guests and external meeting members is relatively easy and works better than other programs I’ve used at previous jobs. Calls sound as good as normal phone calls, video chat works great, even over cellular, and consulting with teammates then transferring them calls works smoothly. A few very minor bugs have not hampered my enjoyment of Teams much, but I do have to mention them to be honest: - Voicemails don’t usually play until I click on several voicemails back and forth, and when they start, they often don’t output audio via Bluetooth accessories (speakerphone or receiver only) unless I had the aforementioned wireless headset connected when opening the app (so closing/reopening the app often fixes that, but not always). - If I have poor cellular reception, there is audio lag between people on the phone, so we’re sometimes accidentally speaking over each other. This is likely just an inherent complication of translating secure digital audio into something cellular carriers accept, as I don’t usually experience this when connected to WiFi or with strong cellular signal. - Copy/paste works ok if you want the entire message, but if you just want a phone number, email, website, or street address within a paragraph, it can sometimes be trickier since it tries to intelligently add metadata to the copied text so it can open the corresponding app. Pasting inside an edited message often doesn’t place the pasted text where the cursor is, but instead puts it near the end of the message or in a random spot that might be in the middle of a word. The workaround is simply creating the edit in an external note app. All-in-all, I could never go back to the old apps I’ve used for work, and have enjoyed having our entire company’s internal communications in one place (except where emails are more appropriate, of course). Happy to see the new features and improvements we’ve enjoyed over the years, and excited to see how it gets even better going forward.
Review by SquareOFortune on Microsoft Teams.