Teams seeks 24-hour party people for consumer chat
- Reference: 1605896105
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/20/teams_consumer/
- Source link:
The additions come a little late in the day as the Windows giant has seemingly ceded mindshare of its existing chat platform, Skype, to upstart Zoom, among people isolated not just from the workplace, but also from friends and family.
The updates apply to mobile, desktop, and web versions of the platform.
For desktop and web, Microsoft had already confirmed that it will be possible to add a user's personal account (just the personal account, mind, [2]no multi-account shenanigans just yet ) and has listed the features available to consumers in the preview.
Not on your Zoom, not on Teams, not Google Meet, not BlueJeans. WebEx, Skype and Houseparty make us itch. No, not FaceTime, not even Twitch [3]READ MORE
As well as kicking off a personal chat or group chat with up to 250 people, 24-hour audio or video calls with up to 300 people will arrive in the coming months. A rogues gallery of up to 49 people can be seen at once in Gallery view or Muppet Together mode, and invites to join in the fun can be shared with anyone "even if they don't have Teams."
The features coming to desktop and web do indicate a desire within Microsoft to recapture some of the ground lost to the likes of Zoom. Good luck with that one peeps.
The preview also added features to the Teams mobile app, most notably the ability to chat to contacts that do not have Teams installed. Relying on good old SMS, the feature is US and Canada only for the time being and only applies to group chats with two or more participants.
We look forward to extended family video calls over the festive season, with the usual arguments augmented by heated debates on which of the "easy to use" group conferencing systems is easiest to get up and running. Microsoft has added itself to an already packed field. ®
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[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/11/19/bringing-personal-features-in-microsoft-teams-to-desktop-and-web-now-available-in-preview/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/05/teams_multiaccount/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/16/monday_column/
[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: getting help and support from Microsoft
ROFL
Welcome to the real world. People all over the world have known about this for decades. Their support even to paying customers is almost non exitant and in my experience, Sharepoint is about the worst.
We used to call it 'Share - what is the URL of my document today point.
I'd put a document into it and copy the URL. A little while later, I'd use the URL and all I got was a '404'.
Where the F*** has my document gone?
The company mandated that we use Sharepoint. So we recorded the insertion and logged the URL. Box ticked. Then we'd load it all into our local git repository. We knew that we could find it there. PHB's were satisfied and us developers went about our business happy that the docs, code and everything else was accessible.
Then they moved Sharepoint and everything else into Azure. That broke the company security rules that we'd all signed so we stopped putting it into the cloud. Things went wrong with our Azure sharepoint. It took MS two weeks to sort out and restore the data. Nuff said.
Re: getting help and support from Microsoft
Attempt to open spreadsheet in teams app - most features don't work
Right Click to 'open document in browser; - different subset of features work
Now have a right click to 'open document in sharepoint' - get a few more features
Finally 'open in app' starts excel so you can actually do stuff.
Muppet Mode
Love that. Snappier than "Celebrity Squares" or "University Challenge" mode.
"[...]only applies to group chats with two or more participants."
Group chats with a single participant need not apply...?
trust Microsoft?
How can anyone trust Microsoft to make this all work and keep it working? And what happens when it doesn't, can you get support? We have recently just rolled out office 365 but SharePoint performed dreadfully, getting help and support from Microsoft was nigh on impossible!
I also hope not needing Teams installed also equates to not needing a Microsoft account to join a meeting, that was the prime restriction that drove me to implement Zoom over the other offerings last year.