MS Teams

[DCI Harry Batt]

Online versions of desktop apps are poor. And I have Autosave switched off, by choice. Every now and then it switches itself back on, which is annoying and risky.

[Snake Plissken]

Edit: For Ginger Yellow

It's a SharePoint document library view, just embedded into the Teams client. I'll have a play with a test tenant to see if you are able to configure it. Looks like it is the default All Documents view.

I agree with you on putting the Chat files in there, as they end up in the sending users OneDrive. You can go into the Chat history for the Group and click Files to get to all files that have ever been put in the chat. Opening one will open it from the user OneDrive.

Could be done better, I agree.

[Bored Of Education]

My wife is now teaching via Teams, though the asynchronous stuff she's doing via Firefly.

Apparently some colleagues with weaker class discipline have complained about kids larking about, muting the teacher, kicking other kids out, unmuting themselves and unleashing loud burps. An audit trail would be useful, though of course I recognise this is not likely to be a common workplace problem.

See, I am amazed by people saying they are actually teaching via any sort of video conferencing despite anecdotal evidence (and, as I have signed onto loads as mentioned, getting loads of emails exhorting me to). Even the weekly half hour video catch-up sessions that we have - along with the evidence of social ones that I do - are so glitchy as far as internet connection is concerned, combined with the inability of half of them to connect due to user ineptitude or tech issues (not least that some of them haven't got laptops or tablets at home) make interactive 'lessons' seem impossible. This is leaving aside behaviour issues. I have only got 9 kids as well so the thought of doing it with 30 astounds me. The biggest session I have taken part in was 12 people and that seemed unwieldy albeit one of us didn't use his power of mass muting.

[Snake Plissken]

Ginger Yellow Just played with it - the Files view is the All Documents view in SharePoint, so you can change that (add columns, filtering etc) and it will feed through into Teams.

Any files that you post into the Group Chat get added to the Files/SharePoint Library behind it. URLs don't, it looks like. If you PM me your email, I'll show you a few screenshots.

[Wouter D]

Another reason why MS Teams sucks:

The behavior of pressing the Enter key in the chat screen cannot be configured. Every other app allows you to configure this behavior. Even Whatsapp has it as a setting. Some people prefer to send their message on hitting enter. Others prefer to send their message only when clicking the button, reserving the Enter key for putting a newline in a message. I am one of those other people.

I know that my preferred behavior can be simulated by consistently using Shift-Enter instead of a plain Enter. But this really ought to be configurable. As it stands, far too often I submit incompete messages because I accidentally hit the Enter key.

[Levin]

It does seem to be it's major flaw. A lack of end user customisation. I mean, it's nice now that 3x3 meetings are live that it will adjust the number of streams shown based on your bandwidth but some people would rather 9 crappy videos rather than the program deciding who to jump between. I do really like it still and you can see that at the moment they are just focusing on getting new features in to match competitors.

[Nurse Duckett]

We found today that we can now have separate chat windows (not sure what the limit is). Which was nice.

[Snake Plissken]

No limit (that you can reasonably be expected to hit). But all chats between the same people are kept together.

[Etienne]

At our GP surgery we use EMIS to deal with patient records, and also as a communication tool - it has an instant messaging function, and a panic button which can be used to alert other members of staff if a patient is violent or collapses.

However, they are removing the panic button as apparently it doesn't work well enough, and the instant messaging is not working very well either.

Someone has suggested that we could use Teams to replace both these functions. Currently we all have access to teams, but it is pretty much solely used for meetings so I don't know how it would work to deal with these situations. Does anyone have experience of using Teams for instant messaging or for emergency alerts?

I don't really want to get everyone logging into another different piece of software unless it will work well.

[Ginger Yellow]

I mean, it's basically a messaging platform with meeting functionality from Skype bolted on. I don't know what your messaging needs are, but I don't see why it wouldn't meet them a priori. As for emergency alerts, I don't think it has anything built in that is designed for that, but you could set up a team which is just used for that so that you know if you get an activity notification from that team it's an emergency.

[Etienne]

The key thing we need is the functionality for a message (or at least the notification of a message) to flash up on the screen of someone while they are working on EMIS or some other non Office software.
Are messages recorded after being read?

[Ginger Yellow]

They're permanent, subject to your workplace's deletion policy. And you can set up notifications more or less however you like - phone, badge on the taskbar/dock, Mac/Windows native notification.


If you've used Slack, it's basically the same thing but with a clunkier UI and more Office integration.

[Lang Spoon]

I would have more faith in MS than Salesforce (Slack) regarding storage of sensitive data.

[Levin]

What GY said. You could also probably build something very quickly with Flow that supercharged the notifications.

[Levin]

The data protection side of M365 is really good (if you're paying enough money) and you have good policies to work from. Although, I'm not sure about the changes to Purview.

I thought the resurfacing of this post was going to be about MS announcing that they're making teams less resource intensive.

[Lang Spoon]

Yeah if you have E5 and the time, info protection and DLP is plenty powerful. Let's just say we're looking to make the time. And completely change the org culture re mailing shit randomly to anywhere.

[Etienne]

Thanks all. This is going rapidly beyond my comprehension, but it's reassured me that it is fit for the purpose if we chose to go down that route.

[Snake Plissken]

The data protection side of M365 is really good (if you're paying enough money) and you have good policies to work from. Although, I'm not sure about the changes to Purview.

I thought the resurfacing of this post was going to be about MS announcing that they're making teams less resource intensive.

That's "New Teams" which is rumoured to be heading into limited external alpha testing Real Soon Now.

[Snake Plissken]

What GY said. You could also probably build something very quickly with Flow that supercharged the notifications.

At the risk of solutionising, the problem with Teams notifications is that it is all or nothing, so an emergency/priority notification is lumped in with the rest.

However, I reckon you could turn Teams notification off, have a Flow and a PowerApp that is set to notify when an emergency message is received.

[Ginger Yellow]

However, I reckon you could turn Teams notification off, have a Flow and a PowerApp that is set to notify when an emergency message is received.

That's the "correct" way to do it, but you could do it just in the settings without any "coding" by creating an emergency alert channel and pinning it, then only turning on notifications (or having a different notification format) for that channel.

[Etienne]

Given this is the NHS there's no way I'll be allowed to do any "coding", though I could potentially request it be done for us.

[Patrick Thistle]

I'm surprised you don't have a separate panic system not linked to your computers. What if you aren't logged in and you find someone collapsed?

We use Teams for instant messaging a lot in my organisation. It's beginning to replace email. Want a quick answer? Use teams. Trying to organise lunch? Use Teams. Need to cover your arse in future when your boss denies all knowledge of a decision they made? Use email.

[Etienne]

We have panic buttons under the desk in the clinical rooms too, but they don't tell people which room to go to.