Forum Discussion
Contact list no longer available in new Teams version
KengSeong99 that takes you to the new "People" app which does not include presence, so doesn't fit the requirements.
I’m not saying this isn’t a real pain vs the old Contacts List (I truly miss it), but Presence is available within the People App - at least on an individual basis, you just have to dig deeper.
It’s not perfect – and I hope they update the People App in the future to bring back what has been lost in terms of functionality from what was in the old Contacts List.
- Open People App
- Click a category, then click a name from your list of contacts.
- Click Contact
- presence status shows in the box below
abesso Is the people app a separate app or is it part of the new teams? I don't see it anywhere.
You may need to click the three dots ... for the "View more apps" link.
then search People. Once you have it added, you can then PIN it (right click, Pin).
This document should help with that:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/manage-your-contacts-with-the-people-app-in-teams-cfea34b9-ac23-4cff-b3d1-c97bb2b1e751
(but I do remember that it was more complicated than what can be seen in this doc; there should be a post in this thread with instructions on how to find it)
Thanks, I thought it was a feature of Teams. I've been able to add the app and it solves some issues but not all of them. I did have a hard time finding the app though because I was searching on the button called apps. nameless0ne
abesso Thanks for this I really would have never found it.. so now that we know the new teams has access to presence info, why not just put it on the master contact list (or where ever a contact is displayed). It can't be that hard to do. Perhaps a Wishlist item?
- As far as I understand MS does not want to poll the presence info for all the contacts to display it directly in any list. This is why you have to navigate to a contact to see this info. Even if you have a pinned contact in the chat it does not display the up-to-date presence info. You need to hover over the contact at the top of the chat window for Teams to poll the presence info. (the contact can be green and when you hover over it the presence might update to away and last seen 10 min. ago). I've read somewhere that this was done during the pandemic to help with performance.
- then perhaps contacts in a list, not every contact. Although doesn't seem to be a problem in the old teams. or at least let it be a setting, it should be my choice if I want to offset some performance for current presence.
It is not that MS has removed features (presence and contact list) altogether. Nobody argues that. It is the fact that MS has 'altered' the existing features and made them super duper difficult to use.
Those unnecessary clicks to reach the same information that was just there really rubs people the wrong way.
There is a reason Amazon managed to patent 1-Click checkout and it was a big deal. Features that make life easier for users are sought after.
An now what we have here is MS making things worse. Seemingly just to push users to their app-centric paradigm.
In my day-to-day use of Teams I would never leave the 'Chat' tab with just a sprinkle of 'Calendar' use. And now I need to use a separate 'People' app that I had to 'install'
