Microsoft Teams essential features missing...

[John_Chris]

Hello,

In my organization we use Skype for Business for meetings and seminars. Recently I started checking Teams in order to find out how it works as soon as in the near future Skype for Business will be replaced by Teams.

I found that many features that are usually required, are missing:

• Presenters and participants. In Skype for Business we use to add specific attendees as presenters and we assign that role during the event schedule from Outlook Calendar (Meeting options), except the presenter's possibility to add co-presenters during the meeting. No such option exists in Teams meetings scheduling
• Annotation and notes tools. In Skype for Business we almost always use built-in annotation tools on a presentation, window sharing or whiteboard. I haven't found such an option in Teams
• Whiteboard. No built-in whiteboard in Teams!! It only has the option for third party InVision application which needs additional sign up, that I cannot demand from my users
• Surveys, breakout rooms, polls, etc... no option for that
• Can Teams playback a video (online stream like Youtube or local file), like Skype for Business?

I suppose those are the least features that Microsoft should add in Teams and certainly I think Teams is not yet ready to substitute Skype for Business.

Regards,

John 

[#2]

Hi!

If you schedule a live event (now GA) you have the option to choose presenters etc! See if this fits your need here

Rolling out right now is the Microsoft whiteboard to use in meetings to collaborate in a whiteboard in real time ! For now internal collaboration only!

You can start recording a meeting anytime by pressing the three buttons and record meeting! This will be saved in stream for internal viewing! Also available from the meeting chatt tan or channel afterwards!
It’s easy to download this and add to YouTube or any other service for external viewing! External stream access is coming though

[#3]

@John_Chris There's a very long list of things that Teams can do but Skype can't e.g.

• Single conversation thread so you can start on one device and continue on mobile etc. All kept entirely up to date
• Background blur in meetings
• Video and audio calls on mobile, screen sharing from mobile 
• etc. etc. etc.

In terms of your specific features:-

* Presenters and Participants - It's coming, but Microsoft's telemetry showed it wasn't frequently used in Skype so it didn't get prioritised. As per @adam deltinger pointed out it's often more appropriate to use Live Events in these 'broadcast' type meetings, where your audience are viewers not participants, and you can do this today.

* Annotate PowerPoint - I used SfB extensively, but had to go Google to find out that you used to be able to annotate the files. Sorry I've never heard anyone ask for this before, and not heard about it being on a roadmap. The Team product group are very responsive and read every request posted on their Uservoice at https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com

Annotate screen sharing wasn't possible in SfB, and isn't in Teams

* Whiteboard is in preview now, you can turn it on and it's awesome. Far better than the Skype whiteboard that always looked like MSPaint. Read more https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/What-s-new-in-Microsoft-Teams-the-Enterp...

* Polls etc. In a live event there's a mechanism for recording and voting for questions. The features in Skype may come in the future and I would suggest adding your votes to uservoice

* If you mean embedded in a PowerPoint, yes you can.

[#4]

Thank you very much for the answers.

Our organization is a University and seminars. lessons, presentations etc usually have one or two presenters, while the audience is needed to attend and ask questions but not have presenter role and rights to record or manage the meeting. So presenter and participant selection is something essential for our conferences.

Also essential is the annotation on presentations. I don't know whether most users annotate on presentations but we do it very often. Most of the times it is needed to use annotations, highlight, laser pointer (and math typing but this is something different and more advanced) on presentations in order to see them the distance participants. The marker tool on the top of a presentation was helpful, of course we also use other platforms that are able to mark on desktop or program sharing too.

Regarding the whiteboard, you mean external Microsoft Whiteboard application shared by screen sharing? Because in Teams I only see the option to sign up with third-party Freehand by InVision, and not a built-in whiteboard, not even as an application to add. As I have read it may be available for Teams Meetings inside 2019.

Finally I am not able yet to see Live Events options (I suppose because we are not yet in Office365 A3, waiting to be enabled) I can only schedule a Teams Meeting in calendar, with participants, not just viewers, so I don't have the opportunity to test this type of event.

In every case I suppose meetings should gain all the above features in Teams Meetings developement plans.

[#5]

@John_Chris 

What would happen if they were presenters ? Teams is somewhat smarter than Skype in that everyone after the first 4 participants join muted. We regularly have Teams MVP meetings with > 100 participants and it's fine, but perhaps we are better behaved (seems hard to believe :) You can add your vote on UserVoice where the product group play close attention to what people post.

I guess you could annotate if you presented PowerPoint through application sharing, but it's not there in the powerpoint viewer in Teams at the moment. Again add it to Uservoice so they know, but personally it's not something I've heard requested before. Put all your slides as pictures into Whiteboard then draw over them ?

Yes, Microsoft Whiteboard is now supported as of a couple of weeks ago, but it relies on your organisation turning on the preview features for WhiteBoard as an admin. It then appears next to The invision whiteboard. It'll probably be in preview for a couple of months before becoming available to all.

Live Events are a choice when you organise a meeting from within Team, there is option at the top left to change between normal meeting and live event (the down arrow). It could be that your organisation has turned this off as it should be available on all plans to my knowledge.

[#6]

@Steven Collier Thanks for the replies, Steve.  I'll just note that, lately, the Teams product group isn't very responsive on UserVoice.  Many requests have been "In Progress" for over a year and no updates.  Also, the Microsoft 365 roadmap is in shambles.  You'd think that something In Progress on UV would be In Development on the roadmap, but there's no correlation.

Even the features listed in the latest blog posts aren't on the roadmap.

[#7]

The roadmap and uservoice aren’t the most reliable tools out there! Many features says “in development” but you never know in what priority they are developed! As you said there’s a lot of those in UV! In charge of updatesing those was a person who also stopped working for MS! I do hope they are still in development though! When they’ve reached to a certain limit and they know more about ETA etc it may end up on the roadmap, but not always!
I agree that MS could work to make this a better experience!

Adam

[#8]

@Phil Lyle I was with the Teams product group a couple of weeks ago at the MVP Summit, I can tell you that they all talked about UserVoice, and we even met a sub team called 'Customer Obsession' that read every single post and comment and correlate it against plans and support incidents.

Replying in a meaningful way is a far more difficult issue than I think many people expect. Firstly it's a competitive market, and it doesn't make sense to reveal all of your developments to competitors. For example often we user requests being met in innovative ways, it's not always obvious what the solution will be.

Secondly Teams in built upon most of the rest of Office 365, and what might seem to be a team feature may rely on all sorts of other changes in separate products. For example your PowerPoint annotation request may well be fixed by some as yet un-announced new capabilities in PPT.

Finally I know people like to get dates, but every feature is released based on meeting quality metrics not calendars. If there is a chain of dependencies each with variable timing, the end date is super uncertain, setting a date and then missing wouldn't be great.

[#9]

Very good insights!!

Adam

[#10]

@Steven Collier All valid, and thank you.  I was not implying that they don't read the comments, more that there is now a significant backlog of "In Progress" items, and a number that don't get marked at all, but are in progress according to blog posts.  Some cleanup is probably needed.

Regarding competitive advantage, I'd normally agree that there is some truth there, but I don't see the difference in saying "We hope to deliver this in Q2" versus a perpetual coming soon for something such as private channels.  You already told us it's in the works, and your competitors have it.  Worst case, you update the roadmap with the new updated delivery date.  I do get the sense that they might be trying to group together some of these enhancements into a "Teams 2.0" marketing push or something.

[#11]

@Phil Lyle personally I would rather they communicated less on UserVoice, and perhaps more on the roadmap. These comments that things are 'planned' or 'under development' seem to create more confusion than they solve. The roadmap provides the simple, trackable list for other products.

[#12]

@Steven Collier I couldn't agree more!  

"one source of truth" is the phrase that comes to mind.  

I'd like Microsoft to adopt the attitude that the Roadmap is the one source of truth, and UserVoice and other platforms should note that something is in development  and refer to the Roadmap link!

Right now some status info is given out in multiple places (Uservoice, techcommunity, roadmap) an they're clearly not in sync.

[#13]

@John_ChrisTotally agree with you. Microsoft Teams is simply not ready for rollout in its current state. The features you mention in your second and third points are crucial to me, and they are still missing today.

Also missing is the ability to share two or more application windows at the same time as per SfB; I find sharing the whole desktop an unsatisfactory substitute.

I'm certainly not upgrading until these gaping holes are filled in.

[#14]

I know this is an old thread, however it came up on a google search for annotations.  We use a screen sharing program called zoom.  We are an engineering group and we meet weekly to discuss business.  We couldn't live without the ability to markup the model on screen with the annotations (I have a stylus pad just for these meetings) and then we screen capture notes from team input as needed, wipe the screen clean and move to the next engineering item.  We absolutely could not operate with out the ability to narrate via mouse pointer, draw lines and shapes over the screen and generally sketch on screen of the presenter (as well as presenter doing the same).  Zoom's tools are a bit clunky as far as how they are initiated and how they retain or loose "focus" but I hope teams implements these features soon as we are now vested in 365, sharepoint and the teams environment.  it is a PITA to switch to zoom now, so hopefully this is on the road map somewhere...

Respectfully,

Eric

Cad Manager

Surface Worldwide

@Steven Collier 

[#15]

@ekelly-wiz have you tried using Microsoft Whiteboard in a Teams meeting? Yes you would need to paste in a screenshot then collaborative draw on top of it.

[#16]

That would be such a clunky process, we are working on a live 3d model, having to constantly flip back and forth to some sort of whiteboard is just a bandaid for us (and I am guessing any engineering firm that holds online meetings uses their live cad data in the discussion)  after meeting notes.  We are a progressive bleeding edge team, meaning that the cad industry is just starting to use distributed workforces and as they are able to use sattelite engineers, specialists, etc.  We are one of the first distributed workforces and are encountering many different challenges such as this one with teams.  The entire CAD industry is experiencing a move to the cloud (slowly) and as people such as managers and engineers move to a home environment where they maybe meet once a month or once a quarter in person, spaces like teams will become an integrated part of our workflow.  I am a CAD manager, managing 3-5 engineers at a time not including subcontractors.  None of us are in the same area.  Online meetings are part of our daily workflow.  95% of what we do, teams is sufficient for (so far).  on screen annotations is a hole that hopefully microsoft will fill.  If you have the opportunity to pass this conversation up hill to a superior, please feel free to do so.  Thanks for responding Steven,

Eric

@Steven Collier 

[#17]

@Steven Collier  Presenters and Participants .. Microsoft's telemetry showed it wasn't frequently used in Skype so it didn't get prioritized. 

Wow, that's unfortunate.

Ironically this is one of those advanced Skype features that I enable on day one as default for all my meetings, that I'm the only presenter - until I individually "promote" other attendees.

I use this as a way to help Me control and drive the meeting.  This prevents that one guy from just saying "I've started sharing now, let me show you this ..." and then derailing the flow or purpose of my meeting.

[#18]

@John_Chris I utterly agree with you. There's a massive difference whether one uses Skype for Business for meetings, webinars and other more or less static, oneway communication kind of things or for interactive, engaging virtual classrooms. 

I am a learning architect and for me the key is that we do not introduce new tools for our business, just for the sake of being able to push learning. We have used Skype for business, because everybody uses it everyday and knows how to log into meetings etc. And basically we have been able to do more or less all the things on Skype for Business that are available on true virtual training platforms like Webex, GotoMeeting etc, the only thing I have lacked is the easiness of break-out-sessions.

Now with Teams, I do see that the professional touch and feel you get with the lobby functionality and having the presenter role will be missing, same as the smoothness of shifting between all the interactive tools (Q&A session, polls and whiteboard) is gone and you cannot any longer design interaction by utilising the annotation tool into your powerpoint presentations, as the functionality of being able to annotate on shared (uploaded to the meeting) powerpoint is not available in teams.

So for interactive and engaging virtual classroom training, I am afraid I have to look for another tool. 

And please feel free to educate me, if I have in my own hands-on testing ignored something.

Thanks a million!

BR, viivi

[#19]

@Virpi Tuulikki Vepsä 

You don't need to migrate from SfB just yet, Virpi.

SfB is available until July 2021, so there's plenty of time for Microsoft to fix these gaping holes in their new Teams product.

If they don't fix them, I shall be migrating as well, as I write on PowerPoint presentations all the time, often using a blank slide instead of the Whiteboard, as that works better.

If you've already been migrated to Teams, just put in a request to Microsoft (via the Admin link) to change you back to SfB. That's no problem for them. Then just go into the Admin section every month thereafter and defer the automatic downgrade () to Teams, as Microsoft are relentless in pushing their customers to migrate to this inferior product.