First of all, "slack" is an inside joke about the church of the sub-genius, with "Bob" Dobbs. That's a bunch of nitwits and I'm not stooping to that level. (Same goes for "slackware linux," bunch of shmucks yes a'la alfred e neuman.)

Second of all, Microsoft harassed me one time too many to "sign in to keep using microsoft teams." You know what happens if you stop signing in to keep using microsoft teams? You can stop using that stupid thing. Which is nothing but a rehashed crappy version of "Skype," with all the same echo and crash problems it ever had. Let's put it this way: I clearly recognize "test call" as being identical.

You know what works just as flawlessly as it ever has? That would be my SPA2102 "voip" adapter and my e-mail account. If you can't talk to me on the 'phone and you can't send me information via e-mail, then I guess you & I just don't have anything to discuss.

First of all I'm guessing if you know all about JR "Bob" Dobbs it means you've retired. Could be wrong, but just a guess.

Second of all, no one is saying you HAVE to use Slack. Just because everyone else is driving cars, you can still ride your motorcycle if you prefer.

Third of all, Slack is actually pretty useful in reality. You can have a bunch of alerts shared between your team, and discuss them right there in place. You could even kick off builds and do the whole "Chat Ops" thing, if that floats your boat. You can contact a bunch of people and get answers instantly, rather than waiting for an email chain.

Last of all, email sucks for most things. It still has its place, but people stretch it far too much.

If you can't talk to me on the 'phone and you can't send me information via e-mail, then I guess you & I just don't have anything to discuss.

The problem with this attitude is that eventually you won't have anything to discuss with anybody.

Unfortunately you can't demand that world + dog does business according to what you deem as "acceptable" or communicates in the specific ways that you feel are best. I'm afraid if you take this sort of stance on things then all that happens is ultimately you'll be the one who isn't on the right side of opportunities, growth and progress.

Even in the early 2000s some businesses wouldn't invest in IT/email and refused to communicate that way. Some of those businesses didn't survive. Stuff changes. Adapt with the times.

The Teams application on my work-issued laptop hasn't crashed the entire time I've worked here. I haven't had echo problems. If you can't get it to work properly then I'd suggest contacting a helpdesk as you clearly have issues.

Your SPA2102 adapter doesn't support collaborative video conferences with shared documents or whiteboards among a geographically diverse team.

It doesn't support instant messenging, something that allows asynchronous conversation between individuals and groups that's very distinct from email.

It doesn't support document storage or sharing.

I guess you're right, we don't have anything to discuss. We work with people willing to be accessible, collaborate and work as a team.

So, let's replace a free, mature and easy to use standard (email) with a multitude of commercial, incompatible and mostly buggy proprietary programs apps. Seriously, isn't it glaring obvious?

Of course in a world where corporate communication is handled through Twitter or Facebook nobody sees the problem. You have to move with the times bro, be cool! Have a soy latte!

We've had Teams for over 2 years now... And it accounts for around 15-20% of our communications.

Most people still send emails.

Most people still grab the phone, if it needs an immediate answer.

Some of us use Teams, but a majority still use the stable solutions. It is slowly taking off, but slowly. Around 1,3 messages per employee per day, on average - and I send a few dozen. We had a new system go-live last week, which boosted the figures, around 3,000 minutes of audio/video, but most of that is probably between a dozen people or so.

...is responsible for a lot of wasted time in my org. GIF's, smiley faces, in-jokes and now avatar icons spreading like a moronic wildfire. They forced everyone to get a desktop camera, then tell them to turn them off in every meeting. $57 a user a month for an E5. I'm staggered by the hardware I could buy if they gave IT the money instead. We gave up a managed and redundant 1GB network so people could use back alley, lowest bidder Chinese routers from home and they wonder why their call quality is garbage.

MS reports services down all the time, but the users blame us. Not one IT person was behind the transition from Skype to Teams, but we're the ones smeared by their crappy services going down every day.

Features appear without warning, completely open, so we're scrambling to close security loopholes continually. Then MS offers us security consultations to teach us how to turn off the features they turned on.

Collaboration documents people work weeks on, only to have a VP come in, say "that's wrong" then overwriting the teams work with their own plan that they've had all along. Yeah, what a winner Teams is.

Am waiting for the day MS is not accessible for a week. We'll get the blame for that as well, but I'll be smiling.

Sounds like you are working for the wrong company, and you clearly hate it. There are LOTS of jobs out there right now, or you could even try contracting if you are even half decent (and you can get on with people).

"Not one IT person was behind the transition from Skype to Teams"... how does that even work? Did they get the canteen staff to do it?

Plus resource usage.

My teams currently has 10 processes open totalling nearly 1GB of RAM.

Outlook - 1 process - 150MB.

Not exactly sure what Teams is doing in all those processes, presumably the system tray notification item and main chat screen at least, others, who knows.

Since moving to a workplace that uses Asana, internal email usage has dropped to zero. Which means it's easier to spot spam.

Using gChat internally also insulates us from cold calls.

HOWEVER, all of this is so much frippery when compared to the ever-increasing number of retailers that only offer a phone line. If your business model means your time is more important than your customers then you deserve to go bust.

The one thing I prefer about messaging over email is that you generally get some indication of whether or not it's been seen.

"Seen" doesn't mean read, or understood, and sure doesn't mean acted upon.

But with email you didn't know *anything* after sending it. The result of this was that a lot of people (notably management in larger companies) simply forwarded email and then considered their job done because somebody else was dealing with it. Apparently. Or if you sent an email to a restaurant to book a table, the only way you'd know if it had been read is if somebody confirmed your reservation... which didn't always happen. I remember going on holidays years ago and finding websites for restaurants with email contact forms that had about a <30% success rate of some response.

Of course messaging isn't a full solution to that problem but the very fact that you have some indication of *if* a message was opened, and can talk in real-time, is a genuine improvement over: send...... wait...... ???

My analogy with email is it's like putting money into a bank account but one where you can't view the balance. You have to hope it's gone in. At least with messaging you can get some confirmation of what's occurred.

I just wish we'd pick one channel and stick with it. I have people messaging me directly in Teams, team message board posts, @mentions in Teams that produce Teams alerts requiring multiple clicks to clear, @mentions in Office & Azure DevOps that produce emails, emails to schedule calls & meetings that take place in Teams...

Just give me one @#$% channel to keep track of. I don't care which channel it is, but just pick one.