It's very limited isn't it? There must be easier and more effective ways to use it. You can't organise anything and conversations get all confused and lost, files are just dumped in a single storage place. Is there a functionality that i'm not seeing? (Bear in mind I;m not an admin, but i am using it as the trainer of a course). I've reached the point where I think the only way to help everyone make sense of it is to migrate most of the things over to Google (docs in drive, editable there rather than in Teams, forms, etc, with videos created in Zoom and uploaded). I know we;ve got MS people here - is there any functionality to Teams? I understood it was a kind of copy of Slack, but Slack is way more organised and possible to manage)
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I'll try to help as much as I can. Probably the best approach is to not think of it as a chat / meetings client, nor a file store, but an overarching collaboration tool. So it can seem a little messy at first.
First up, what exactly is the first problem you are trying to solve, or understand? -
I quite like Teams, although we only started using it properly since moving to homeworking.
You can create areas for file-sharing in the Teams tab--ours is organised by groups, but you may need some permissions. Are you using the full version or the web version?Comment
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Yeah, I thoroughly recommend downloading the app. You don't need admin privileges to install or update it.Comment
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Cheers. Ok, so I have been given it as the tool to use to run an online course. Clearly Teams is not really the right tool to do this, but that's what I've been given.
We are using Zoom for live synchronous stuff (this part is no problem), and Teams for the rest (all the asynchronous stuff). The way i am trying to do this is to (a) pose questions in the forum for people to answer, or respond to in some way; (b) upload other documents and links to inform some of these discussions; (c) create editable documents that participants can add to to build up list of good ideas and so on (wiki style)
(b) is not really a massive problem, though having only one level of file storage is kind of annoying
(c) seemed to be working ok, but occasionally a participant will manage to delete the document entirely, losing not only their contributions but everyone else's too
(a) is the biggest frustration as there appears to be no way to organise these things and now we have multiple conversations that are almost impossible to navigate. there might be something i posted yesterday which by now you;d have scroll back huge amounts of stuff to even know it was there.
Obviously what i really need is a VLE or something that was actually designed to do this. But them's the breaks. Any advice would be incredibly gratefully receivedComment
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I'm using the app (the desktop app anyway, I'm not doing anything from my phone)Comment
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Are you using channels within the team to break down discussions by topic (it's difficult but you've got to instill in people that they must reply rather than posting in the Team section)? Or are you just using the chat group part?
Your Team has it's own sharepoint site that has all the sharepoint features (like recoverable documents and file version history) it's not that obvious from Teams itself sadly. Are you an owner of the team? If so I think you can change your members permissions to files etc. SharePoint can just be set up and people let loose but it does work much better when some thought has gone into the site and how to use it is communicated. That is a pain in the arse though on both sides so what usually happens is that its just used as file storage.Comment
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I suspect much of the problem here is my (lack of) permissions.Comment
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Channels? I don't know how to create them, and I suspect i can't, as I've tried clicking everything at this pointOriginally posted by Levin View Post
(I'm just using the group forum (the tab reads "Posts")
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Oh, God, if you're not using channels, then yes it will be a nightmare to have multiple discussions going. The entire UI is built around having separate channels
Within the Teams tab on the left hand side, click on the the three dots next to your team name. One of the options should be Add channel.Last edited by Ginger Yellow; 06-05-2020, 09:31.Comment
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I should add, as of a few months ago you can create either standard channels which everyone in the team can access, or private channels for specific people only. Users can also hide channels they're not involved in.Comment
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Sadly this is the menu I get when i click those three dots
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I have new channels! (Sadly i don;t get the permission to create them, but I begged the "owner" of the team to do so, and he has created some for me.)Comment
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Even "the team" is beyond me. I need to have a proper play.Comment
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Regarding your other points, Teams gets much more functional when you make use of the integrations (which, unsurprisingly, work particularly well for Office applications). So you can flesh out your channel with an Asana or Planner tab for assigning and monitoring tasks, or an Excel tab to have a worksheet just living in the channel, or a OneNote tab as a scrapbook (might be useful for file storage, at least for things that don't need to be edited)Comment
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Re: channels - be sure to name them clearly. My boss set up 'Toronto ACD Chat' for him and the five of us to have private discussions. One of the five of us set up 'ACD Chat' for just the five of us to moan about our boss. You can see where this has led...twice already.
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We are implementing it to replace Zoom and instead of someone's want for slack. I am confident it will achieve the same ~50% active engagement (a loose term) and die a death like every other next solution to the communication "problem" (answer: 50% of staff don't want any of this shit).Comment
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Actually, I did manage to install it on my admin-unprivileged PC. It was touch and go for a while, but then my desktop struggles to open internet explorer* sometimes.Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
Coincidental to the timing of this thread, IT finally got round to setting up our departmental team today, we've just been using the chat and calls feature for the last month.
*which says a lot about my trust's IT by its presenceComment
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I wildly preferred Slack, but now that I've been on Teams for so long, the pain has gone away and I'll be pining for Teams when the next thing comes along.Originally posted by caja-dglh View Post
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We have had jabber. We have had a host of other things. We even have ~50% of people who voted out on having their photo on internal emails. Even if surveys give mgmt a sense that the way to improve their survey scores is more engagement and communication stuff, it is quite obviously never going to get over this speed-bump.
Obviously, management (or my manager) hates me as I always say this whenever we are tasked with "bumping up the survey score".Comment
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Jabber appeared on our desktops in the last monthly updated, but it has never been announced, nor any training supplied.
I'm a bit surprised that we have not fallen foul of the Zoom backlash, but it just hasn't landed at the firm or at the non-profits that I work with regularly.Comment
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The thing with Zoom is that it is clearly the best software of its kind and it is reasonably priced, unlike many of the other alternatives (and all the alternatives are simply not as good for many reasons - functionality, ability to work in low bandwidth contexts etc). I think it is no surprise that non-profits are still using it, despite the security concerns. Big for-profit companies can pay for more secure alternatives, but regular users and people for whom cost has to be a primary consideration, and functionality also highly important, will be continuing to go with Zoom until something better shows upComment
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@ua I remind you of the *specific* employer I have and it makes the concerns forced upon us unsurprising.Comment
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