Client v2

[Brian Reese]

I've seen where people have requested a more compact view of the teams client for professional desktops. I'm wondering if you can share what the plans are for that and how it will surface? I personally like the full screen view and find that it works great for me, but have heard others complain about the screen volume, so I am hoping they both will be options. 

[#2]

+1! this is the uservoice request: https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/17408641-please-create-a-profe...

The layout is really problematic - maybe 2 modes are needed: regular and compact.

[#3]

Yes, strongly agree. the amount of space burned is absurd. And the lack of private channels exacerbates it because you suddenly have proliferation of dozens of "Teams" which could easily be done as a private channel. The results is 10 Teams with a  big Team icon and name a bunch of whitespace and "General" then nothing else.

It's quite annoying.

[#4]

I love the full screen when working in Teams, but I'm one of those who would like a compact view, mostly just for quick chatting.  If Skype functionality is merging into Teams, I would like a compact view for when I'm just using the formerly Skype features.  So... would love to see this myself.  And multiscreen too.  :)

[#5]

Looks like you beat me to the punch with that question, I just posted the same thing!

A compact view for the client is absolutely needed, and contrary to some of the discussion in the uservoice thread, that doesn't just mean reducing whitespace in the existing client. We need a view that just presents the contact list, similar to the Skype for Business client. Something that can be kept open on the side of the screen all day long, allowing me to start chats, calls, and view my contacts' status at a glance. When I want to see my team chats, files, etc I can always open the full view back up.

[#6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian!

Thanks for your feedback. Having a compact mode setting is something that we've been working on! That being said, we've also been working on making the default a bit more compact as well. 

[#7]

Hi, can you expand at all on the compact mode?

Sounds interesting.

Electron or PWA or something else?

[#8]

+1 Many users that want to just tuck teams in 1/4 bottom right of their screen while they use other none Office related tools

[#9]

Awesome Lorraine! That's great news. 

Can you share with us a rough timeline for when we can expect to see some examples / availability? 

[#10]

Call me weird, but I have Teams open all the time and simply minimize or maximize as necessary. The slot adds a red dot to tell me when something's changed for me.

[#11]

Weirdo... :)  I do the same, and I'm mostly OK with it as long as I'm in multiple monitor mode, but I'm out and about a lot with a laptop and therefore a single monitor.  The moment I'm trying to work on something outside of Teams and real-time chat in Teams is when it becomes frustrating to move back and forth.

[#12]

Agreed.

I don't open teams when I'm in conference rooms demoing or taking notes.

[#13]

How about a separate optional window?

If I click the chat and leave my app workspace, the word file/onenote book/etc. is just closed out and I have to navigate back.

[#14]

Or, using a new desktop would achieve the same end. I know you can do it in Win10 and Ubuntu (not sure about the other distros) and if I recall, OS 10.x has that ability as well.

[#15]

Full screen mode is fine for me, but it would be nice to utilize the space better. I would also like tabs or some way to keep one or more chats open while at the same time editing a document, onenote or navigating conversations.

[#16]

@Lorraine Wong, how is it coming along, can we expect it to be released by the end of this year?

[#17]

FWIW, I've been asking the Teams people about this at Ignite for the past 3 years.  That first year, I was told that they've been getting the feedback requesting a compact view and they were discussing it, but couldn't give a timeframe.  The second year, they said they're working on it, but couldn't give any details or a timeframe.  This year, the person I talked to acted like they acted like they had no idea what I was talking about, she didn't know anything about requests for or work on a compact view.  

She did say that they have been working to make chats able to pop out or show up in individual windows, which is a step in the right direction, but that still doesn't give a way to keep the contact list up on screen off to the side of other apps.  

I described the use case -- staff want to keep the contact list open and off to the side while working in our main line of business apps.  Her response was to suggest that we should bring our main apps into a tab in teams, so that they can do everything in teams.   >:(

I really get the feeling that the Teams team is well aware of this request, but choosing to ignore it because it doesn't fit with their vision of how Teams should be used.  They want Teams to be the user's portal to everything.  A compact view would enable users to work they way they want to, rather than the way MS wants them to.  :(

Steve

[#18]

I concur with the need for a not-full-screen configuration for Teams. I rarely have any window full screen.

[#19]

Lorraine,

Any idea of an ETA on this? My dev team really wants to use Teams. The video conferencing reliability is great. But, the lack of a compact view has kept us from replacing Slack with Teams.

Thanks,

Forrest

[#20]

‎Funny/odd that Lorraine has not responded to your 12-07-2018 06:19 AM request for estimated timeline on the "compact" feature and in fact no one has responded to anyone's questions about that!

It's been over two months!

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@forrestd wrote:

Lorraine,

Any idea of an ETA on this? My dev team really wants to use Teams. The video conferencing reliability is great. But, the lack of a compact view has kept us from replacing Slack with Teams.

Thanks,

Forrest

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