Teams is shovelware. Force bundled, with questionably reliable messaging, okay video calling (if your organization policies don't break it), and a fairly useless Phone System component that misbehaves often.
Great for organizations that believe these forms of communication should be an afterthought that has rough edges and inconsistent reliability.
The recent changes to end webhook support, kill Linux desktop support and do yet another rewrite are inane. Don't expect features you use today in Teams to work in 2 years...
My org went all in on Teams over 6 years ago. Removed all PBX systems and desk phones. Pulled out Cisco phones from 20 offices. Ported all numbers to MS. By all accounts it was unremarkable to the end users, and when WFH mandates started it was seamless. Definitely a lot less IT support for configuring and troubleshooting a phone system too. There is far less downtime because Teams will ring through to your cell phone if the office internet is down or your laptop is off. That was not possible when the Cisco routers and CallManager in the office were running the DIDs and local extensions
> That was not possible when the Cisco routers and CallManager in the office were running the DIDs and local extensions
You could do it with other software hosted outside the office though. There are definitely options here.
It was, in fact, even with existing Microsoft products (Lync/Skype for Business). It was even possible if you had paid for those features for UCM from Cisco. Teams was simply the cheaper option (although they tried to keep charging my org Lync prices, and we had to threaten to uproot MS products and go to Cisco before they gave us the new pricing).
The hot takes are from people that have haven't touched Teams in 6 years.
Like everything Microsoft it was shit for the first few years, they slowly sorted it out, and now it's fine. Most non-tech-bro businesses successfully run the majority of their comms through it.
The main problem now is that it works fine, and the project managers on Teams need to create work for themselves, so just mess around with stuff that wasn't broken.
> The main problem now is that it works fine
Except from:
* notifications for channels
* search
* using more than one org (needs app restart!) although screen sharing between 'classic' and 'web' editions works only if sender's and receiver's graphic cards share a hw-accelerated video format blessed by teams. Not, it's not easy to check what edition you are running and you can't change it without poking js variables by hand
* inconsistent read statuses between devices
* 'incoming call not shown at all' bug (but you get a missed call notification)
* can't join two video calls even in two separate windows
* random audio device switching on every morning (even if you don't close the app and computer for the night)
It's fine. Messages sometimes fail to appear unless you navigate away and back and sometimes they fail to appear at all until 30 minutes later but it's fine. This regularly slows down communication and costs company time, but it's fine. It's 2026, classrooms full of children can vibe code a chat app but a $3T company struggles with basic chat functionality. It's fine.
still no way to check your email from teams though.
Why would you want to do that? Outlook is perfectly fine, and on Windows it’s easy enough to toggle between the two windows.
There's no way to check my tire pressure through teams, either. That's a good thing.
Let applications do a thing. The more we duplicate the crappier the original and the duplicate get.
> Great for organizations that believe these forms of communication should be an afterthought
Yeah great for in person and email companies.