What can't everyone just use Teams? Rant of the day!
Discussion
Grumpy pants on today.
90% of clients use Teams. Works a treat. You then get one that wants to use Zoom but because hardly anyone uses Zoom, you find that to join the meeting you have to download the latest version - a fact only made known to you about a minute before the meeting starts.
Then I had a quick request to join a meeting today - no probs - send the link. It's for some Cisco thing I've never heard of. Download, open, join but need to configure my Mac and give permissions which requires that I logo out, restart, and try again.
Bleedin' online meetings.... what's wrong a phone call or a face to face, eh?
90% of clients use Teams. Works a treat. You then get one that wants to use Zoom but because hardly anyone uses Zoom, you find that to join the meeting you have to download the latest version - a fact only made known to you about a minute before the meeting starts.
Then I had a quick request to join a meeting today - no probs - send the link. It's for some Cisco thing I've never heard of. Download, open, join but need to configure my Mac and give permissions which requires that I logo out, restart, and try again.
Bleedin' online meetings.... what's wrong a phone call or a face to face, eh?
We use Zoom all the time because many of the calls we do are with first time video conferencers and we found that (contrary to your experience) they could join in their browser without needing to download anything. Conversely Teams (because Microsoft) was flaky, wouldn't accept our virtual background files (since fixed, for now) picky about updates and difficult for non-MS users to navigate.
I guess we are all drawn to line of least resistance, but where that sits seems to vary for each of us.
I guess we are all drawn to line of least resistance, but where that sits seems to vary for each of us.
Sheepshanks said:
geeks said:
The Cisco one is Webex.
All of which have a join online option where you can join from a browser rather than a client
Blimey - has WebEx really been relegated to "some Cisco thing I've never heard of"?All of which have a join online option where you can join from a browser rather than a client
We used to have rooms set aside at the office for Cisco video conferencing kit. Huge monitors, cameras that tracked you. Even special conference tables that would merge with the image on the screen to give the impression of a single giant table. All made obsolete by Zoom, a bit like Nokia getting blown out of the water by the arrival of the smartphone.
Teams sucks balls, by the way. If you're an SME and you use Msft for everything, yes, I get it.
Teams sucks balls, by the way. If you're an SME and you use Msft for everything, yes, I get it.
geeks said:
I know right? Was at one point the biggliest player in that space
It's still very good, and well integrated with the other Cisco stuff like jabber etc. However, Teams is (more or less) free in the average business environment, and works well enough most of the time that, as the OP pointed out, it becomes a rare event and a pain in the arse sometimes when someone uses something else.It's very hard to resist not just standardising messaging/voip/web conferencing on Teams, and unless you had some specific requirements I don't know why you wouldn't.
jeremyc said:
Because, as mentioned, Teams is clunky, flakey and not a great experience.
Also, (surprise, surprise) it doesn't play nicely in an Apple environment (certainly not in my experience).
Zoom is the most straightforward and performant solution I've found.
Can you be more specific because I work mostly from Teams and Apple devices and cant think of a single time where I have thought "I wish we had Zoom/Jabber/Webex"Also, (surprise, surprise) it doesn't play nicely in an Apple environment (certainly not in my experience).
Zoom is the most straightforward and performant solution I've found.
Because Teams is a dismal product that makes the already enervating business of video meetings even worse. The only reason it is the norm is because it's MS, so lots of businesses default to it.
Zoom is better (read less bad) and significantly simpler to use ime. All the calls I set up myself are on Zoom, if someone wants to do Teams then I ask them to send me the invite;)
But as noted above, you don't need the app for either, you can join via a browser if you click the link.
As a Google suite user (not without problems of its own but generally less awful than MS cloud offerings) I like Google meet best of all. But that's niche as participants have to be on Google platform too.
Zoom is better (read less bad) and significantly simpler to use ime. All the calls I set up myself are on Zoom, if someone wants to do Teams then I ask them to send me the invite;)
But as noted above, you don't need the app for either, you can join via a browser if you click the link.
As a Google suite user (not without problems of its own but generally less awful than MS cloud offerings) I like Google meet best of all. But that's niche as participants have to be on Google platform too.
dontlookdown said:
Because Teams is a dismal product that makes the already enervating business of video meetings even worse. The only reason it is the norm is because it's MS, so lots of businesses default to it.
Again, I ask, can you be more specific? "Because I said so" is not a valid argument lolNot looking for a fight here I might add, I have a genuine techie interest
geeks said:
jeremyc said:
Because, as mentioned, Teams is clunky, flakey and not a great experience.
Also, (surprise, surprise) it doesn't play nicely in an Apple environment (certainly not in my experience).
Zoom is the most straightforward and performant solution I've found.
Can you be more specific because I work mostly from Teams and Apple devices and cant think of a single time where I have thought "I wish we had Zoom/Jabber/Webex"Also, (surprise, surprise) it doesn't play nicely in an Apple environment (certainly not in my experience).
Zoom is the most straightforward and performant solution I've found.
- Incredibly confusing trying to log in to a Microsoft Account - many times in the cyclical circle of doom being asked to log in.
- Seemingly impossible to make multiple Microsoft Accounts work and switch between them (for example a personal and a work account, but I also wanted to be able to use accounts linked to emails from different client companies).
- When presenting a PowerPoint slide show (for example) that is full screen, not being able to see the gallery of participants' videos at the same time.
In a business environment most people will have Office 365 so Teams is just bundled.
It's probably different trying to use a personal account but most b2b meetings probably aren't like that.
Plus of course it's a full collab environment rather than "just" meetings.
Nothing at all against Zoom but if you're a 365 shop it's almost certainly an extra per-head expense.
As for WebEx honestly last time I saw it was pre-Covid I think. Sure it still exists but I think for most businesses Teams and/or Zoom just killed it stone dead.
It's probably different trying to use a personal account but most b2b meetings probably aren't like that.
Plus of course it's a full collab environment rather than "just" meetings.
Nothing at all against Zoom but if you're a 365 shop it's almost certainly an extra per-head expense.
As for WebEx honestly last time I saw it was pre-Covid I think. Sure it still exists but I think for most businesses Teams and/or Zoom just killed it stone dead.
Because teams is crap. MS bought out Skype which worked perfectly in all my years of using and then killed it in favour of a program with a flakey UI, a total inability to decide if its running the app or in a browser tab and even then it will just freeze.
I've also had months of it deciding my MS account was not a work or school account and kicking me out for no reason. I hate it.
I've also had months of it deciding my MS account was not a work or school account and kicking me out for no reason. I hate it.
te. The company I worked for rolled out Teams globally (basically because MS threw it in for free with a corporate Office license)
My own department and many others used our budgets to pay for Slack and Zoom rather than use Teams for free
I think that about sums it up
My own department and many others used our budgets to pay for Slack and Zoom rather than use Teams for free
I think that about sums it up
Edited by mikef on Monday 26th January 21:33
I've been thinking about how much we've sleepwalked into total reliance on Microsoft Teams at work (and I suspect many of you are in the same boat). Every meeting, every chat, every file share, every bit of collaboration - all sitting on American servers, governed by American laws, subject to American political whims.
We've essentially outsourced our entire communications infrastructure to a foreign power. And I'm not being dramatic here - this is exactly what it is. When Trump can force TikTok to sell or ban it with a pen stroke, when the US can cut off Huawei from American tech overnight, when CLOUD Act allows US authorities to demand data from US companies regardless of where it's stored... why do we think Teams is somehow immune or safe?
This isn't a "go back to carrier pigeons" argument. There are perfectly good European and open-source solutions:
Element/Matrix - Proper end-to-end encryption, can self-host, used by French and German governments
Nextcloud Talk - Part of the Nextcloud suite, keeps everything in-house
Rocket.Chat - Open source, self-hosted, does everything Teams does
Wire - Swiss-based, proper security credentials
Yes, there's a migration cost. Yes, there's the "but everyone uses Teams" network effect problem. But we're talking about strategic resilience here, not just convenience.
We've essentially outsourced our entire communications infrastructure to a foreign power. And I'm not being dramatic here - this is exactly what it is. When Trump can force TikTok to sell or ban it with a pen stroke, when the US can cut off Huawei from American tech overnight, when CLOUD Act allows US authorities to demand data from US companies regardless of where it's stored... why do we think Teams is somehow immune or safe?
This isn't a "go back to carrier pigeons" argument. There are perfectly good European and open-source solutions:
Element/Matrix - Proper end-to-end encryption, can self-host, used by French and German governments
Nextcloud Talk - Part of the Nextcloud suite, keeps everything in-house
Rocket.Chat - Open source, self-hosted, does everything Teams does
Wire - Swiss-based, proper security credentials
Yes, there's a migration cost. Yes, there's the "but everyone uses Teams" network effect problem. But we're talking about strategic resilience here, not just convenience.
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