Microsoft Teams update could turn your meeting into a complete mess
techradar.com
techradar.com
Teams is wretched; this hardly seems like it will make matters worse.
This update "could turn your meeting into a complete mess" in the same way that I can turn a meeting into a complete mess by screaming into my microphone.
How did this article even get approved?
Or the same way that one person in a large meeting randomly keeps unmuting throughout the meeting and we hear a bunch of feedback.
(I got a good chuckle imagining someone unmuting to scream into the microphone)
Unfortunately, it turned out the hardware mute on my headset wasn’t working correctly.
I never trust hardware mute, I rather see the software also show a mute icon as well.
Of course in Google docs and sheets many can edit at the same time and create a mess. But it's not really integrated to an online meeting.
The few times I have used Microsoft Meet I found it harder to navigate. Whether that's a real problem or just not what I am used to I don't know.
I never got why many people hate on Google Meet.
It’s one of the few that don’t push a download to join a meeting, everything is lightweight and sandboxed in the browser.
But as a team (if you have a meeting with a team) there's agreements you can make, like how only one person can speak at a time (use an accessory like a ball to indicate who can speak right now). This will make the meeting more egalitarian, since in a lot of meetings (usually involving men), it's a lot of people interrupting and talking over each other so that the less forward participants are effectively pushed out of the meeting.
There's also a lot of cases where a meeting goes from reviewing workflow or implementation details and someone ends up railroading the meeting into bikeshedding the sidebar color.
I'm not putting on a cape for Teams, it's just the best entree in the buffet line to me right now. I do hate that they removed the ability for any meeting attendee to go add notes to the meeting in advance though.
It seems to be bad wether or not its on Windows or Mac (I used to think it was just bad on Mac but I have had that assumption proven wrong multiple times now).
The number of times I have coworkers whose cameras just don't work.
My current fun 2 issues, I no longer get any alerts so I am stuck keeping my work phone next to me for teams alerts and my microphone has a weird popping or static to it (I can't reproduce this with any other app).
It feels like almost every meeting someone will end up uttering the words "damnit teams" or some variation when something just doesn't work as it should.
Slack may have had some problems but I really miss using it.
It’s maddening.
What's the difference between a "participant" and a "user"? Zoom has allowed anyone in the meeting to annotate since forever (there's an option to disable it though), and I haven't seen it cause "a complete mess".
As others have pointed out, this article is much ado about nothing.
You get Teams with Office. You don't have to pay for something else -- something better, like GTM or WebEx. And so you use it, and those other, better options wither.
We watched the same thing happen with word processing (though to be fair WordPerfect refused to adapt and was complicit in its own demise) and spreadsheets (same song for Lotus). The exact same thing happened/is happening with critical path scheduling software -- there used to be lots of them, and now the only real alternative to MS Project is Primavera P6.
Ugh.
That being side, Zoom had this functionality for awhile now. It's actually beneficial to me if someone is giving a presentation and I have some notes or trying to get them to click somewhere they can't comprehend...
> The video conferencing service has announced a change to its platform that will allow all meeting participants to make annotations whilst on a call.
> Previously, only a participant sharing their screen on a Microsoft Teams call could make annotations, which allowed for quick and simple collaboration on thoughts, suggestions or ideas - however this ability will now be expanded to all users.
Brace for the smiley faces.
What annoys me the most with Teams is that the menu we use every time, the one where you choose which speaker and which microphone you will be using, is buried under "...", then "settings", then "peripherals" ... I hate that so much!