Advise when the contacted person is busy

When I message someone and don’t pay attention to their status (Busy, In a call, Presenting, etc.) I want the Teams Bot/App to reply with something like:

Adam Cogan is currently in a call and may not be notified of your message. If it is urgent, please click here to send the notification now.

This will be a useful feature so that we are made aware of the recipient’s status before we start pinging them continuously.

Slack has this already implemented with its DND (Do Not Disturb) feature. Link to example: Knock, knock: Introducing Do Not Disturb

Figure: Example image from Slack blog showing their DND feature

Navigation – Help me know where I am

I click a link (sadly an unreadable link):

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/file/946926A6-F818-4208-9CFE-0D74BBC96619?tenantId=ac2f7c34-b935-48e9-abdc-11e5d4fcb2b0&fileType=xlsx&objectUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fsswcom.sharepoint.com%2Fsites%2FBrisbaneRetreat2020%2FShared%20Documents%2FGeneral%2FBrisbane-%20Retreat-2020-Attendance.xlsx&baseUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fsswcom.sharepoint.com%2Fsites%2FBrisbaneRetreat2020&serviceName=teams&threadId=19:27c127ee866b495e9a42775b66be92b9@thread.skype&groupId=fb84bba4-1504-4c82-96e5-ab938868ad2b

And I go here.

Suggestions:

  1. Where am I? Can you please add a breadcrumb that takes me to the team that this file belongs to (see red arrow)
  2. The ‘Close’ button should be renamed to ‘Cancel’ because it takes you back to where you were eg. the last chat
Figure: The navigation is missing

Help Chinese Android users know how to download Teams

In China, everything is hard and amazing. Chinese users on an iPhone have no trouble downloading Teams.
Android users, talk about plenty of pain if they go down the wrong route.

Basically, they find it hard to download. The Teams website, tells you to download it via the Google store which is bad advice in China (all Google services are blocked by the Great Firewall of China 🇨🇳).

Here is one example of a senior developer:

  • It took me about 4 hours to install Teams, more specifically to download it
  • I tried to install it via Google services first, but obviously, it failed.
  • Then I searched and downloaded 3 APK files from my PC, but all of them are too old.
  • Finally, I installed it from Mi store (aka Xiaomi store).

In summary:
In China, no you don’t need a get on a VPN to get Teams downloaded. For an Android user, you have 2 options to install. You can install it via the Mi store or AppChina. The Mi store is the best approach – Eden Liang (from SSW in Hangzhou) has recorded a video to help others. Here is the video:

Help me move part of a conversation

I am on a mobile device a lot E.g. iOS and often people send tasks on it.

Currently, I can only select 1 message at a time and copy and paste somewhere else.

Suggestion:

Allow me to select a bunch of messages and pop up the menu and see:

  • Copy and paste
  • Send to a new email
  • Send to OneNote
  • Send to Azure DevOps work item
  • Send to Trello

Figure: I want to combine these 4 messages and send to an email

Unnecessary notification groups

1. Why is this notification for a team shown in the “Activity” and not the “Teams” group

2. Why do we have the “Activity” tab at all? I don’t think it’s needed.

3. Furthermore, do we even need the “Teams” tab. I don’t think so, I’d like them all together like Skype

Help me Clean Conversations…I see too much noise!

Please make Teams work nicely for those that have OCD :-)

  1. If I delete a message. I am OK with seeing “This message has been deleted” for a little while
    But then I want an option to get rid of it. Eg. a cross “x” to get rid of that too
  2. If I delete a message, I want the thread deleted too (see red arrow below)
  3. If I install a bot, ask for some help, then realize I didn’t like it. I now want it *all* gone.
    Currently, I can remove the bot, and my own message to the bot, just not the 2 message from the bot (see below)

Help me move off Skype, auto add the contacts

I’m not sure if you’ll agree with this but I thought I’d pass it on.

My personal assistant Joanna is reluctantly moving off Skype.

What should her first experience be? Should ‘Chat’ have a list of names even before chatting to anyone?

She just pinged me and said:

Okay, I’ve switched from Skype to Teams. I’ve been added to the team called “SSW”. When I go to chat to someone, I expect to see all the people in those teams. I feel like I am starting afresh and almost need to add all my Skype contacts again manually. This is not the starting experience I expected.

Figure: Joanna’s first experience is this… no names…

[Also posted at https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com/forums/555103-public/suggestions/19527574-help-me-move-off-skype-auto-add-the-contacts]