EU's Microsoft Teams Alternative Draws Bad Reviews From Officials (politico.eu)
- Reference: 0185990608
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/10/02/1743247/eus-microsoft-teams-alternative-draws-bad-reviews-from-officials
- Source link: https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-microsoft-teams-alternative-bad-reviews-element-pro/
> "I don't understand the added value here," one official wrote on an internal staff message board, seen by POLITICO. Another described the tool as "absolute shit." A third official said that, judging matters on how well Element Pro works compared to Teams, the U.S. would "instantly win the war" if it ever decided to switch off its technology. All the officials were granted anonymity to speak freely.
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> The Commission hosts the Element system on its own infrastructure rather than relying on Microsoft's cloud. That gives the institution greater control over its communications data and systems. "That is not the case with Teams, where all we have is a guarantee that Microslop will not peek inside," a fourth official wrote, presumably referring to Microsoft, in internal communications viewed by POLITICO.
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> Element is a U.K. company whose software is used by governments and public-sector organizations in Europe. The application works much like Teams, allowing staff to hold "audio and video calls with Commission colleagues, send and receive files, and create dedicated 'rooms' for projects and conversations, much like chats and channels in M365 Teams," according to the Commission memo.
"Obviously there are going to be some teething issues," said Element CEO Matthew Hodgson, adding there will always be "cognitive dissonance" when switching to a new app, if only because the "buttons" are in a different place. He noted that the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro.
"Change is always painful, particularly if it's a switch from a much-used program like Teams."
[1] https://element.io/en/pro-app
[2] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-microsoft-teams-alternative-bad-reviews-element-pro/
Constructive responses anyone? (Score:3)
"Absolute shit" is not quite constructive, and the CEO alleging that it's probably because the buttons are in the wrong place is also very bitter and not very helpful. And all these petty bickering useless fucks are in positions of power.
Re: (Score:2)
Slop is the fastest way to fix security issues in Excel while simultaneously breaking Paste.
Slop speedboat FTW!
Re:Constructive responses anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much this. Element has it issues, but the major problem is that users expect it to work like Teams or whatever they were using before the switch so they complain. When our company switched to Elements a year ago the major complaint from users was that it didn't work like the previous application.
Personally I think Teams is absolute shit and I prefer Elements, but that's just my opinion
Re:Constructive responses anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Any of these chat apps are going to be mildly frustrating once you cram all the desired features inside and run it securely in a cloud
Re:Constructive responses anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah, I'll agree with you. Element certainly has quirks but Teams is quite bad. Not as bad as say maybe WebEx or others but still quite bad. Element is...fine. Could be better but does the job well enough.
Re: (Score:2)
> Personally I think Teams is absolute shit and I prefer Elements, but that's just my opinion
I have to use Teams on a daily basis, and I share your opinion regarding the software.
Re:Constructive responses anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
> So it couldn't possibly be that the new software simply isn't as good and lacks important or useful features?
> I've worked on government software projects before and my guess is extremely little of the allocated funds got to the contractors actually writing the software. They probably hired one or two programmers maximum and gave them a two or three months to throw something together, then said 'oh no, the money ran out' and shat out what they had percolating.
> $10M spent, maybe $50K in the developers' paychecks.
I'm going to assume you don't know anything about Element or the Matrix protocol it uses here. It's an open source project that has been in development for a while. I've used it for at least 7 years and have watched it grow. Additionally, I am forced to use Teams for work and have done so for the same number of years. I can say with certainty that Teams is absolute garbage with Element able to run on multiple platforms natively with several alternative front ends available as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly this.
The job the Element team is doing is absolutely awesome.
If you consider it's open-source, they are 10-20 developers compared to the size of Microsoft, and that most their users are free-loaders (myself included), it's absolutely insane they manage to get a product this good. Plus they develop an open protocol and ecosystem at the same time.
Yes, end-to-end encryption is a bit rough on the edges, but the product really rocks, and the overall open design is what any messaging app should have been
Re: (Score:2)
Why isn't EU sponsoring specific features and fixes it needs?
Or assign some of their own developers to submit pull requests.
Or hire *some Europeans* who are unemployed because their war is killing industry.
Let's hear from their project manager instead of faceless wankers and the people responsible for sales.
Re: (Score:2)
Teams crashes reliably whenever I start video on my laptop. I haven't noticed this very valuable feature in any other similar program so they're clearly inferior to Teams.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the bigger problem is trying to replace all of Teams in the first place.
Just give us Skype back! Sharepoint already exists and works fine in a browser (sure, even Edge if we want to go there); and I actively go out of my way to remove OneDrive every time MS shoves it back down our throats. Bam, there goes 90% of what's wrong with Teams.
Re:Constructive responses anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Teams is not being replaces because it is crap (it is, but still), Teams is replaces because it is from Microsoft and an order from the US administration can make it non-functional for any user (with several examples now, although MS is lying about them). Hence Sharepoint and eventually Windows have to go as well. And nothing of value will have been lost.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, I totally get that point, and agree! But my point remains: We don't need to replace Teams-as-a-whole with a craptastic monolithic of mismatched functionality shoehorned into one poorly-behaved application. We need a messaging app, halfway decent teleconferencing, and a collaborative document management platform. And I guess some form of locally mountable cloud storage, if you're a fan of giving your personal data to completely untrustworthy third parties.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes. Unfortunately the EU has officials that are total idiots too. And, who knows, maybe Microslop had a hand in generating these reviews. Would not be the first time.
Sure Element isn't Teams level (Score:5, Insightful)
but I don't feel like these criticisms are warranted. I use it on a much smaller scale but it does what it says on the box. I get the feeling the people interviewed just don't like change. Unfortunately the article doesn't have much beyond the summary to back up any shortcomings.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah I think there are a lot more variables involved here - any new product, even 'like for like', needs cognitive adjustment and muscle memory change from users. So change management has to be a big part of deployment. I don't know how much time or effort went into that here.
The other part is that Teams is pretty well embedded in the microsoft walled garden - so identity, integration with calendar etc all comes for 'free'. These guys are trying to stitch together a bunch of good FOSS apps into something si
Correction: (Score:2)
> "Change is always painful, particularly if it's a switch from a much-used program like Teams."
"Change is always painful, particularly if it's a switch from a much-maligned program like Teams."
There FTFY.
Stockholm Syndrome? (Score:2)
What's so great about Teams again? It's improved over the years, sure, but it still isn't great. At least I can send people messages and correctly assume they actually receive them... usually. But then again I could do that with Google Talk 15 years ago. Why do we have to keep reinventing the wheel?
Re: (Score:2)
> It's improved over the years, sure, ...
When did this allegedly happen? I've been using Teams for quite a few years, but I managed to miss the period when it improved.
Re: Stockholm Syndrome? (Score:2)
IME it mostly works now. It's always slow and stupid and the UI is crap, but most of the features work most of the time
Anybody remember how bad Teams was? (Score:2)
And, for example, that Teams finally got an Audio-test this years or so?
But my take is these are just people that do not want to use anything new. And they are too dumb to understand what the move away from Teams is actually about. Yes, the EU has dumb officials too, sadly.
"Absolute shit" (Score:2)
Congratulations, you have created an exact MS Teams exact replacement.
I'm been using chat/messaging apps since BBSing and AIM and I'm not sure I could deliberately design a less useful piece of junk than Team if I tried.
Re: (Score:2)
I’m old as dirt, use teams everyday. Works great for me.
Only problem I have is crap handling of multi tenants.
Confused (Score:1, Flamebait)
Does "Signal" not exist?
Re: (Score:2)
yes it does. if it supports ID-entra-like user management, meetings, calendars, and mobile device management then I'm sure the entire EU got it wrong.
What is the use when you have mail? (Score:2)
Sure, Teams offers video calls.
But looking at how it is mainly used I much prefer mail.
The messaging part is just a distraction, a waste of time as it makes you have to keep an eye on two applications.
Re: (Score:3)
> The messaging part is just a distraction, a waste of time as it makes you have to keep an eye on two applications.
But how else are you supposed to get your daily dose of pet news and stories about your co-workers' kids?
Re: (Score:2)
True, I forgot about the slop :)
Re: (Score:2)
Does your company not have water coolers or a modern equivalent? I may not always want to have a human interaction with my coworkers, but if I'm going to have one it's going to damn well be like a human being.
Let's Be Honest. (Score:1)
I see lots of snark towards Teams and defending Element Pro in this thread. But lets be honest; despite the fact that we love to hate on Microsoft, the EU sovereignty replacements suck donkey dicks! They truly are "absolute shit" in comparison to Microsoft 365. They are truly shit compared to Google Workspace.
You can have EU sovereignty or you can have best of breed. To date, two are not the same.
Re: (Score:2)
Say more; be specific.
What is missing or broken?
Can't replace 1000s developers and billions of $ (Score:2)
You simply cannot just up and replace a product that has 1000s of paid (ie motivated) developers working on it with a budget in the billions of dollars overnight with a vibe-coded alternative. If you rely on open source, you can eventually get there, but even then, it can take years to catch up and make perfect.
AOL Instant Messenger (Score:2)
What was wrong with AOL IM...it was free and always worked, no AI crap, no enterprise tie-ins...just chatting.
Not the same at all? (Score:2)
Teams is so much more than "chat and video". It's integrated into planning, it's integrated into file storage, and so on.
Comparing Element and Teams is silly, at best. And, yes, I like the idea behind Element, but it's always a mess of changing features, long-standing usability issues that gets ignored or closed because "we moved on, surely now this isn't a problem anymore" (it still is), weird design decisions, and less basic features than you would expect.
It works as a chat barely. Doesn't scale too wel
Frist Psot! (Score:1)
Trying to keep traditions alive!