Teams Update: Handling Chats and Channels Together

Mitch: Really quick before we get into today's episode, we did not know it at the time, but this actually happened to be Emma's last podcast episode with us. She decided to pursue another opportunity and, yeah, it's not gonna be on future ones. We'll miss her a whole lot. She left her mark here and helped us in so many ways and became a a core part of our business. And so we just wanted to to share that with you all and say thank you to Emma in a in a public space and encourage you to, yeah, leave a note if if she was helpful to you, and we hope you enjoy this conversation with her.

It might not be the last one. She said maybe she'll come back in the future for for an episode. But, yeah, I wanted to to to share that ahead of time because you may not see her in future episodes. So enjoy. We will.

We will. We will. Emergency podcast episode. This is our first time where we said this thing is happening. We need to make everyone aware of this.

So let's sit down and record really quick. I have almost no structure for these 2, and their compliance mindsets are going nuts. So I'm gonna keep it really broad and say there's a change coming. There is a change happening in Teams related to chats and channels. I'm gonna tell you what that is.

Matt Dressel is gonna tell me how I'm wrong, and Emma's gonna tell you what to think about it. So

Emma: There you go.

Mitch: What's happening is historically, in Teams, there's been a thing called Teams. In the left hand side in the app little tab, there's a tab called Teams. And then there's one called chats. You're probably living a lot in chats where you're communicating directly with people you work with. And then on the team side, probably used less.

There's channels in there, the things that we promote to use often, but that's kinda where maybe some files are kept and, might get used a little bit less. They are condensing those two things into 1. So now you will see your chats and channels all alongside each other. So there may be more structure than you like. There may be less structure than you like.

Their goal is to set set it up so that it's ultimately customizable to you so that you can work how you want to work in Teams. So if you work in a couple channels and mostly chats, you can have those alongside each other. Verse vice versa, you can set it up that way. That's their angle on what they want to do. If that is true, is TBD.

I like like, if that's how it works out, it's TBD. We have some thoughts on if it's a good thing, if it's a bad thing. There's lots of nuance, so we want to dig into that today. Just give a quick, like, memo on this topic and say, we're gonna be coming out with more about this and giving guidance around this, but it's happening. You should be aware of it.

What did I miss?

Emma: Well, I would just say the that some are saying this is, like, one of the biggest changes to come to Teams in, you know, 5, 6, 7 years, which yeah. It's it's a big claim for sure. And I do think it's a big change, but so just to give people that context, Matt,

Mitch: you're wrong. I

Matt: mean, I

Mitch: think, yeah, here

Matt: we go. Me doing the whole app is probably bigger, like from scratch and installing a whole new app is definitely bigger, but

Mitch: technology techno yeah. See?

Matt: You think

Mitch: about it from, no, from, like, a technology perspective. But from a user experience perspective, there's very little difference.

Matt: That's correct. Yeah. I mean, like, again, nobody qualifies what biggest change means. Right? They rewrote the whole app.

That's by far the biggest change. But biggest user experience change, biggest change in how you work with things, it's probably one of them. I don't know how many remember when they were switching the order in which you create from the top to the bottom.

Emma: Oh, yeah. I do remember that. Yeah.

Matt: That's also kind of a big change. Yep. So, I mean, they've been making some pretty big back. It's still an option.

Mitch: I know. But you largely roll the back. Yeah.

Matt: It's not the default thing. Originally, it was gonna be the default. Okay. So the thing I was gonna say is that the to your statement about the why, they're making this change primarily because one of the biggest complaints everybody has, including me, is that chats is the first thing you see, and you have to go somewhere else to see all those other content related to channels. And so having them in 2 different spots inherently creates this separation that makes it difficult for people to keep track of it.

Right? And the way they work is radically different between the 2, and I've complained about that for a long time. That is one of the reasons why they're doing this. They're trying to make this experience across the board and and simplify that, but that's a tall order. And the way they chose to do it is interesting.

Maybe not the way that I would choose to do it, but that's what they're trying to do.

Mitch: Yeah. When they were announcing this and sharing it, one of the the comments that they made was, now it's all together because we don't care where the work gets done. It gets it just matters that it gets done. And we're like, we just raise a flag at that, and we're like No. That's not it.

And so I think there are aspects of it that can make it feel a little more confusing or

Matt: Well, can make our job worse, harder to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Emma: Because Because we believe in having conversations, on Teams and channels. We're we're big on channel communication for a number of reasons, and we probably can have other videos linked of why topic based communication is important, in channels. Chats, there's just honestly, Matt, I'd ask you why do we tell people channel communication is so much better than chats? Because this change is going to make it easier for people to want to gravitate towards just chatting because chatting will be happening in

Matt: the system. Make it harder to tell which one they're

Emma: doing. Right?

Matt: So it's not so much about chats versus channel. It's more about organizational communication versus individual communication. And it just so happens of these technologies when you think about chats versus channels, chats is a 100% an individual communication tool. That is what it is. It is individual.

The data stored in your mailbox. It goes away when you like, we can go through all the stuff. We have a bunch of content about it. It is individual in nature. Individual, when you think about an organization and our company and what they're doing, you don't want people putting text messages and, like, it's the reason people don't like email.

It's the reason people don't like text messaging. Channel messaging is by its very nature organization centric. And so that is the reason. It's an organizational method. That's what we would recommend.

Emma: So now because everything's all in the same bucket, the the new future I can see happening, especially if you're newer to Teams, is maybe you set up a team. You've got all your files in that team and then you think, oh, I need to talk to the people on my project about those files. So then you start group chatting with them and you can drag and bring that chat up right next to where that team is. Maybe you created a section. Now you're having all that conversation about that project in a chat that's living next to that team.

And you really didn't mean to do anything wrong but now you don't realize maybe your company has a retention policy on that chat and all of the information in that chat is getting deleted every 30 days or 60 days. It's those types of things that you kinda have to know a little bit about the tools to avoid now with this new this new UX.

Mitch: Yeah. My favorite thing is I think it will be easier for people to leave chats behind because of how they can structure their channels. So

Emma: Okay.

Mitch: A lot of people that I've heard from are like, I'm a member of 50 teams, and it is just obnoxious. To sort my way through that is unreasonable. We use Slack. And one of the features of Slack that you mentioned is creating sections of your channels. So with this change, now I can say, these are my top priority channels where if something happens in that, I wanna see it right away.

Here's my internal channels. Here's my client or project channels. What whatever they are. Now you can delineate what those things are without having to take on the mental load of what team

Emma: is is

Mitch: it within. So that makes things feel maybe less structured than the the technology behind it is. But from a communication standpoint, it allows me to manage it and structure it in the way that makes sense for me. And so I value being able

Emma: to do that. I think for for me too, it's a big win. I think all of us agree that is really helpful that you can create the sections.

Matt: Mhmm. I the unified view and the section thing is by far like, you can do it unread and see everything unread, not just unread for chats. Right? And you don't have to go into your teams and search through the one that's highlighted, find the team that's highlighted, open the channel. Oh, this is the

Emma: title that's got

Matt: the highlighted. They've got the bolded like, no. Just unread, and it's everything.

Mitch: Right?

Matt: It's every channel, everything, message, chats, whatever that I wanna look at.

Emma: Can we talk about that a little bit, though? Because personally, and I'd be curious to see if people can comment on this, if they have thought that was also confusing, I thought the clicking and it clicks it and it makes it purple and that means you're toggled onto that. Yeah. Choosing the the filter view, I feel like is a little confusing or at least it was when I first I've used it now 2 weeks, but when you're trying to get channels or chats or meetings, it's actually also kinda hidden. You have to open a caret menu to open meetings.

It doesn't open by default. So there's those little pieces that I sound like I'm just throwing Microsoft totally under the bus, but some of those things that if you didn't know what you were doing or you weren't an experimental minded person of let me just click around, it'd be really hard to figure out where everything went.

Matt: Or to figure out how to switch back and forth. Your comment about the chats versus channels that you know, at Microsoft, if you're listening, you need to change it. The inner experience of having 3 pill buttons and have one work one way and the other 2 work a different way,

Emma: it's It's confusing.

Matt: It's confusing and annoying.

Emma: And I will say I think I've gotten the hang of it and, like, it's it's, you know, usable and you you figure it out. You sort of remember, like, what you did yesterday and what brought up those meetings and but it's definitely different than it was. And maybe it's a little bit on me for not taking the time. No. It's it's definitely not.

Mitch: Like All I know is I feel for the designers because Yeah. They're tasked with, hey. This thing is in this box over here, and this thing is in this box. We want you to put them together and make them

Emma: be nice. Easy.

Matt: Yeah. That was one of the biggest complaints too is, like, people are like, why do you choose chat as the name for the for the thing? Because Yeah. If you didn't know, they're combining them. I don't think we said it.

The icon, there is no more Teams icon. Yeah. It's all chat.

Emma: Why didn't they choose, like, a more all encompassing

Matt: as well? Do something. Right?

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what the maybe the word all. I don't know. Something that speaks to your teams didn't just go away.

Your teams tab on the left. It's actually yeah. It got combined. But, yeah, again, to the the naked eye, you wouldn't know that.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a it's a challenge and it's not just you that those 2 that that

Emma: interface is confusing. Yeah.

Matt: It's it is not it's not easy. It's not simple. But to your point, it's not simple. It's not easy what they did. So yeah.

Mitch: Cool. Oh, there was one more thing, which is what has changed now is related to the general this is like connecting dots from when they changed it from it doesn't create a general channel by default. Is now if you have a general channel and you only have one channel in a team and you want to show that channel in a section, it does not show as general. It shows as the team name.

Emma: Which I'll preface. I thought it showed as general at first. I was actually prepared to come in and say, oh, it's gonna say general, general, general, general. Like, like, let's say if I wanted to pull all my projects into one section and just have all my project first channels from all my projects in there that are all called general, that's not gonna be good because I won't be able to delineate between them. But we realized after I had pulled all those into a new section and just let Teams do its thing for a minute refresh, it actually recognizes that the general channel was the only channel in that team and it will rename instead of general, it will rename it to just the team name, which takes care of that as an issue.

So if you see that happening, just let it do its thing for a second.

Mitch: Yeah. I think it brings up a larger discussion around what should we name our channels. You, like, you need to think a little bit. Because if it if this channel is going to show in the context of other channels from other teams for one of my users, I need to make sure this channel is named well. Like, that's a different concept that did not exist before really in Teams.

Emma: Yes. So if you are gonna have a team with multiple channels and you know you're gonna pull some of those channels or not even you know, but maybe other people will pull those channels

Mitch: You don't know.

Emma: Into different sections. It's when you're going to have multiple channels, you want to be more intentional about what you're naming it so it could look different than other teams. It will always have that little icon

Mitch: Yeah.

Emma: For your team there, but I don't know. Those are hard to read.

Matt: Yeah. So the other thing that I'll say is you mentioned the general channel rename functionality, which was not really just rename. It was you can no longer make it general. Microsoft has been doing changes over the last, I don't know, 9 months that have been building to this type of thing. I don't think they're done.

I think they're this is just the next move that they're making to make this different. I'm I'm reticent to say better. Sure. But it's this is a big change. I wouldn't be surprised if there's another big change coming after it, but that general channel was definitely

Mitch: What do you know?

Matt: I don't know anything other than when you look at the changes that they've made about the nude all channel experience is a 100% for this purpose. The show the favorite versus show

Emma: Versus hide.

Matt: Yeah. Show hide channels. That's I I can see how these all are building to enabling them to do this experience. And, you know, I so I can see that kind of history, and I I you know, given the state that this is at, I I don't think it's the final. I don't think it's the the end all be all of what it's gonna be.

It's just the next iteration, which is all positive things, you know. In fact in fact, I know we know some because they told us, they said, which is part of the process that I am not a huge fan of, which is they're gonna add a bunch of features that are only available today in channels to chats.

Mitch: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: For example, threaded conversations are gonna come to chat messaging. And I'm like, don't do that. Make the chats worse. Gonna

Mitch: get on the soapbox here.

Matt: I want chats to be ticked. I want chats to be kinda like, you know, green screen text and, like, just terrible. Make it look terrible. Yep. Oh, we but we did not we didn't mention this that I also that I do see some value with, and I was joking about all the chat stuff, but you can actually put channels next to chats.

So if you do have a situation where, yes, I have channel messaging, but I have this conversation that I need to have that's completely separate just with a particular in in individual that's confidential. I don't really wanna make it a a a dedicated channel. You can do that and put that next to the channel and not have to, like, live in those 2 different worlds.

Mitch: Yeah.

Matt: I mean, that's the big thing.

Mitch: Yeah. Couple of thoughts. In my Slack, I have top priority as my top section, and I have both chats and channels in there. I have direct messages. You guys are one of them.

Fortunately, you made my top 10 or whatever. My space stays. Anyway, I have a hunch that this change in particular might put us over the edge of shifting from Slack to Teams. That's like my my my heart is a little bit more open to that because of this change.

Matt: Surprised that that is the one change. But But

Mitch: You know? Yeah. It's

Emma: It it adds a layer of customizability, if that's the word, and I think it will be yeah. It'll be a good shift.

Mitch: Yeah. But safe to say, there's more to come. Like Matt's saying, it's probably gonna be changing. We have yet to figure out patterns and practices and, like, we're getting our minds around it. So we wanted to just say this is happening.

What what's You're gonna see it soon. Yeah.

Emma: The the one thing I think I'd say is, okay. You know it's happening. It's coming. Maybe you started to to see it on your computer. What do you communicate to your team about it?

Do we have any advice on that? I mean, I'd I'd say do a video or do a screen share where you record your screen to

Matt: Communicate it. That's the thing

Mitch: that I

Matt: would say. Right? Peep this is people will see it, and they'll either when they get a pop up like like you did, and they'll either cancel it, and and then they'll be in a world where they don't have it, but everybody else does.

Emma: I accidentally canceled it for a week.

Matt: Yeah. Everyone else had it,

Emma: and I had to wait for a week.

Matt: And then it came back and you said okay. Or they're gonna say okay, and then they're gonna be like, woah. Woah.

Emma: Woah. My Teams tab go.

Matt: Not the same. This is not the same as, like, you know, a new tab in the upper right thing you get to do. It's not the same. This is if you're an organization that doesn't use email, right, that purposely tries to use chats and channels. This is a big change.

Like, this is this is, to your point, the biggest thing that's changed in the last 5 years. Like, it is going to be throw people for a loop. It's not the the piece of feedback that I would give. It is it doesn't won't stop you from working. Like, it's not gonna it's not gonna break.

It's not like you're gonna have to relearn everything, but you definitely want to be saying, hey. I know that this could look like a huge list now. Create your sections. This is how you create a section. You know?

Hey. You there's a bunch of configuration that you can do for it as well. Like, configure it how you want. Right?

Mitch: Mhmm.

Matt: This is how you do know that it's a chat versus a channel. Right? Those are some

Emma: of the things that those pieces.

Matt: And explaining the the pills at the top about, like, you gotta you gotta click off from 1 before you can click on to the other one. Right?

Emma: And if you think you're, oh, I'm not seeing it. Where did everything go? It's probably because you have the wrong thing clicked.

Matt: Just unclick

Emma: everything. Had to. Right?

Matt: Everything will show up.

Mitch: I think we should create a really cringey corporate style training video to for them to send to all employees.

Emma: No. Let's treat let's create a good one, and everyone can use that.

Matt: I mean, we've talked about it. We just haven't we haven't had a ton of time. And, also,

Mitch: it's not much time as we've had

Matt: I know.

Mitch: To talk about it. Yeah.

Emma: And it's coming fast. So

Mitch: Yeah. So that's what I'll leave you with. This is our emergency mini podcast. So we see it coming. We're aware of it.

If you're looking to us for direction We're working. Working on it.

Emma: Yeah.

Mitch: But but

Matt: But get prepared. Like, the most important thing is you probably can't see it yet. Maybe in the in the description, we'll include the link to Microsoft dot Microsoft has a whole dedicated site that you can do some reading and kinda learn a little bit more about it. There's some video content and some PDF content, which is comprehensive, but not great for sending out to end users. Be ready.

Be ready for it.

Emma: So overall, I would say I'm 80% happy about this change. What would you guys say?

Matt: I'm a 100% happy they made a change. Yeah. I'm not a 100% that I'm, like, 80%, 75% that this is the right change overall.

Emma: So it's 80% there from us. What do you think, Mitch?

Mitch: I'm in the middle of 90.

Emma: Oh, nice. I'm Alright. Heard it here first. Yeah. Our hot takes.

Mitch: Cool. Hopefully, that's helpful. We just recorded a different podcast episode and we're like, we need to talk about chats and channels. Let's get this out there. So we're just having a conversation.

And if you have any thoughts or feedback on this, we're setting up a URL at bulb.digital/feedback. I'd love to know your thoughts, and maybe we'll read them in a future episode when we're kind of formulating our ideas more around this stuff.

Matt: We will read them

Emma: Yeah.

Matt: If you send them.

Mitch: Yes. We will. It's maybe. Well, you'll have to see if you make the cut. I will.

Yeah. Anyway, cool. Thanks for listening, and thanks for joining, and we'll see you next time.

Emma: See you.

Mitch: Hey. Thanks for joining us today. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app so you'll always be up to date on the most recent episodes. This podcast is hosted by the team members of Bulb Digital. Special thanks to Eric Veeneman for our music tracks.

If you have any questions for us, head to make others successful.com, and you can get in touch with us there. You'll also find a lot of blogs and videos and content that will help you modernize your workplace and get the most out of Office 365. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.