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Microsoft Teams Launches To Take on Slack in the Workplace (theverge.com)
Microsoft today launched its team collaboration app called Microsoft Teams. The app, which competes with Slack, is available in beta starting today. Microsoft describes the app as a "chat-based workspace in Office 365." The Verge adds:Microsoft is, of course, integrating Teams deeply into Office and Skype. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are all built-into Microsoft Teams, alongside meetings with Skype for Business. For businesses truly living in a Microsoft world, there's also integration with SharePoint, Power BI, and Planner. Just like Slack, you can search across people, files, and chats, and Microsoft is using its Exchange integration to provide notifications. You can create tabs that integrate with other cloud services, alongside tailored channels and even custom memes throughout chats. Microsoft is also making Teams extensible with open APIs and its own bot framework. Microsoft demonstrated Twitter integrations at its event, where you can push messages from particular Twitter accounts into chat rooms, alongside the ability to create quick polls, or share custom meme images. One of the more interesting features is Microsoft's Skype integration, and the ability for chat room members to drop in and out of persistent video calls to gather for projects or a quick chat. Microsoft is allowing Office 365 customers preview the Microsoft Teams service today, in 181 countries. Microsoft plans to include Microsoft Teams in all Office 365 Business and Enterprise suites, with general availability slated for early 2017. Microsoft is also opening its developer preview program today, with 150 integrations expected at launch early next year, alongside 70 connectors and 85 bots.Slack, naturally isn't pleased with the existence of Microsoft Teams. In a full-page ad on the New York Times today, the company attempted to mock Microsoft. Update: 11/02 18:10 GMT: Microsoft says it doesn't have any plans for a free or consumer offering of Teams,
Are doomed to repeat IRC.
Add some pretty wrappers on top of IRC, make messages JSON if you insist on emjois. We've had bots for decades (for doing all sorts of everything). Live communication.
Can someone please explain why Slack is different?
"Hey, you know what hasn't been super over-complicated yet? Interoffice communications. How can we further fuck this up?"
"Let's make a version of Slack, but integrate it with Skype even more!"
"Brilliant!"
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
Am I the only one that pretty much HATES all these chat/IM and other intrusive constant on, constant communication apps and devices at work??
I've been fortunate enough to be able to finally disable fucking MS Lync.
With 100M people a day constantly trying to chat, I can't concentrate or get a fucking thing done.
I finally got everyone to understand, that even though it shows me gone/disconnected, that they can email me, or call if it is truly an urgent need.
I do ok with email since the communication is asynchronous, but with IM...someone is constantly wanting to chat about something, usually inane or something that could be solved by them if they gave it 5 extra seconds thought....and often it is multiple people at once.
Maybe I just don't multi-task well....but anyway, I find that for the most part, constant communication with IM, at least for tech work...kills my productivity and ability to concentrate and work.
Am I the only one that hates this?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
disclaimer: I am a greybeard admin in a dark cubicle in the basement.
those who fail to understand *NIX are doomed to reinvent it, terribly. we have had powerhouse collaboration tools like IRC and jabber for decades now. Yet for some reason, in this foul year of our lord 2016, most admins do nothing more than cash a fat paycheck and install the latest vendor bloat. Whatever it was some C level or director saw at an airport billboard, or got stuffed into their carry on luggage during a gold course trade show, thats what we're punished to deploy and I for one am sick of it. Im sick of this cycle of endless corporate garbage that tries to re invent the wheel with more buzzwords.
your collaborative tools should do one thing and do it well. you should spread the risk of outages by avoiding a single tool, not embracing it. And i cant believe im saying this, but in 2016 you should not be paying for voip or chat in the office.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Is that they rely on IT Teams to deploy their collaboration tools. IT Teams perform an analysis and lock down everything that they can before rolling out the product.
The locked down collaboration tool is unable to be used for collaboration and everyone finds some other way to get their jobs done.
The last two companies I have worked for rolled out SharePoint in such a way that people quickly learned to not allow their documents to become captives in the "collaboration tool" and the ballyhooed sites became unused. If Microsoft does not plan on providing a free/consumer offering then this tool will be relegated to the same dust heap that most SharePoint servers have found themselves in and for the same reason: the people in control are not the users.