MicrosoftMicrosoftHow about providing admins with the means of disabling all that is useless for the small company?
Before I continue, please know I understand what Teams is and I get that there are (many) businesses out there that are enjoying all it has to offer/provide. I'm speaking for the many others (mostly micro-to-small businesses) who don't require/need such functionality.
We (and many, many other small businesses) use S4B for text chat, video chat and the occasional screen sharing...nothing more now and nothing more later (well, unless our business grows from the 20 employees we now have to 200 or 2000 and beyond -- yeah, not likely). Microsoft Teams is obnoxious - nothing more than over-stuffed bloatware - for environments with departments/groups/teams of one (ok, sometimes two). We use S4B for secondary/tertiary means of communicating (i.e., talking) and don't need all of this other functionality (e.g., groups, channels, bots, sites, etc.) to further complicate things in our tiny little environment.
I get it...technology is grand...oftentimes magical, but it's also mind-numbing. Well, duh! The notion that Teams was derived from "feedback" received from users of S4B (not believing this marketing spin one bit) and forced upon the small environments first -- guinea pigs -- so Microsoft can work out the kinks/bugs before promoting it to the ultimate customer (not us small peeps) is very frustrating to say the least.
Admittedly, some of my concerns from months back have been addressed (i.e., inability to switch from typing-to-audio-video chatting without jumping through hoops, can't easily/seemingly establish a line of communicating unless users were in the same group, etc.), but the fact remains -- Microsoft loves pushing platforms upon us that aren't ready for prime-time...it's been like this since the old days (even before SaaS was a thing).
In closing, after looking at Kaizala and other 3rd party chatting apps, it looks like we'll be going back to "consumer" Skype. No, not because we're blinded by the name, but because it works, it's very similar to what we know and, most importantly, it's all we need. We don't have time or the ability to get everyone in a room and promote/support major changes (Skype is not Teams and Teams is not Skype) like the big companies of the world. We would've never left the consumer Skype platform had it not been for the inclusion of Lync/S4B in the Office 365 platform (that and the fiasco of the differing authentication databases)...but yeah, we just completed that transition maybe 1-2 (+/-) years back...and around and around we go! Thanks, for creating more work for the little guys, Microsoft (Teams)!
