Microsoft Teams has come a long way since it’s release three years ago and has undeniably given the Microsoft 365 collaboration offering a much-needed shakeup. I think it was quite clear that Microsoft wanted to get Teams out to the world as quickly as possible and released a product that was ‘found wanting’, shall we say. Many of the most significant flaws have been addressed, bugs have been fixed and many features have been added, such as the Meeting Attendee List. That being said, despite the impressive roadmap both past and future, there are a few UX quirks that I think make using Teams a bit irritating.
I am not sure if this is a well-thought blog post or simply a rant to prevent me from throwing my laptop out the window. Either way, here are 5 changes I would make to the Teams UX:
1 – Back Button: Reverse navigation within Apps and Tabs
The back and forward buttons are a key component in the navigation around the Teams client, both Desktop and on the web. What I find rather annoying, however, is the fact that it only reverses navigation changes between Apps and Tabs, not within them. For example, if I navigate from calendar app to a Team and navigate down into a file structure within that Teams files, if I were to then hit the back button it would take me back to the calendar, not back through the file structure first
2 – Meeting Chat: Auto-mute chat for unattended meetings
When I don’t attend a meeting, I find it incredibly frustrating that my taskbar gets bombarded with toaster notifications and my music gets interrupted by the chat notification going off every two seconds. Why do I care about this chat? I am not in the meeting! Personally, I would make meeting chat automatically muted if the user does not attend the meeting – or at the very least make this an option in the settings. I don’t want to have to wholesale disable notifications.
3 – Calendar: Outlook style ‘click anywhere‘
When I am viewing my calendar in Outlook, I have a habit of clicking around in the calendar to help me digest it and work out what time a meeting is happening against the times down the left-hand side. When I do this in Teams, every time I click it opens the ‘New Meeting’ window. No matter how many times this happens, I can’t seem to stop doing it. I guess because I am still using both Teams and Outlook and they have different experiences. Personally, I prefer the Outlook way of doing things and I think Teams should copy it. Afterall, if I want to schedule a new meeting, I can just click the ‘New Meeting’ button right?!
4 – Chat: Cluttered with Meeting Chats
I like the Chat app in Teams, after some adjustment I now much prefer it to Skype for Business for peer-to-peer chat. What really bugs me though is the amount of clutter created by Meeting chats in the Recent chats section. This might work okay for smaller organisations but I find it far too noisy and hard to find the people I want to chat to. I find myself having to Pin everyone which defeats the purpose really. I think the solution is Microsoft need to address the Contacts functionality in Teams. It’s too hard to add people to contacts and organise them efficiently like we could in SfB.
5 – Activity: Distracting Message Reactions
This one I’ve left until last because it seems minor, but my god do I find it annoying. When I am chatting to someone, whether it be embedded or in a popped-out chat, if they react to one of my messages, I get an unread notification in my Activity feed. I then have to go into my activity feed and click on the notification for it to go away, otherwise, it sits there both on the Activity Icon but on the start menu icon too. Why do I need to do this? The chat window is front and centre and I am staring right at it – I don’t need pesky, persistent notifications!
