We have MS Teams at the University of Oslo (as in many other places), and it is increasingly used by administrative staff. Some academics use it as well, but less so in my experience. I use it when other people force me to, but I would never force others to use it. In this blog post, I explain why.
No Linux support
I have been using exclusively Linux-based operating systems for more than ten years. This includes Android-based phones and tablets and laptops running Ubuntu. This is partly an ideological choice, supporting Free and open-source software (FOSS). However, I would never have done it if I hadn’t experienced Linux-based products being more reliable, trustworthy, and (to me) easier to use.
Microsoft was hostile to Linux in the past, but they have embraced it recently. Strangely, around the same time they embedded Ubuntu in MS Windows, they killed off their native Linux client for MS Teams. I can, of course, still run MS Teams in a browser, which is what I do. However, while most Teams functionality works fine enough in Firefox (my preferred web browser), some do not work at all. I find the Teams video conferencing unstable in Firefox, and the Office 365 products are totally unreliable. Trying to co-write a Word document in Firefox consistently removes whole blocks of text without warning.
So, when I have to use MS Teams, I need to open another browser (typically Chrome) to work safely. I don’t like tools that force me to use a particular platform or software; I prefer tools that adhere to web standards.
App-centric approach
MS Teams is based on an app-centric philosophy. The app contains all the information you need and provide all the tools you need to collaborate. The opposite is a data-centric approach, where data (such as documents) would be the unifying structure. I like to write in plain text files because they can be written and read in various software. That gives me the freedom to move between systems easily. It is also the most future-proof solution I can think of. Plain text files have been around since the beginning of computers and will probably be workable forever.
Data-centric approaches give users the freedom to choose software and platform. Of course, this goes against the business models of commercial players. They prefer to lock users in so that they can sell their products. I don’t want to support that type of system.
Cross-institution problems
MS Teams is typically available at an institutional level. It works relatively well within an institution, but it is equally bad if you try to collaborate with others. I collaborate with people from other institutions daily and always get into trouble. I don’t know how many guest accounts I have had to set up to get into another institution’s MS Teams install. When I still had my native Linux MS Teams client, I had to uninstall and reinstall the client every time I worked on some files in another university’s Teams channel and wanted to get back to UiO. These days, I end up in endless login chains. The problems have escalated after everyone started using 2-factor authentication.
For those working only with people within an institution, this is not a problem, but for academics who rely on cross-institutional collaboration, there is something totally flawed about a collaboration tool that prevents them from collaborating.
Insufficient search functionality
There is a search bar in MS Teams that can be used to find “everything” in all your teams. Whenever I try it, I get long lists of “everything”, but not the things I actually need to find.
Historyless approach
It is probably a setting somewhere, but at UiO, teams are deleted after 2 years of creation. You can ask to prolong, of course, but as far as I have seen, there is no easy way to download everything for long-term archiving. I am so old school that I keep an archive of everything I have been doing since I began using computers. This includes e-mails, documents, whatever. I don’t use the archive often, but sometimes I return to some ancient things. It also gives me peace of mind that I can return to something I made 20 years ago if needed.
I don’t like the approach of just deleting all conversations, files, etc., that I (and others) have worked on. I also don’t like working in a system that prevents me from archiving everything in easy-to-use (ideally open) future-proof formats.
Hanging in there
I don’t have a choice, so I continue to use MS Teams when I have to. However, I think there are both practical and ideological reasons to avoid it when I can. I will at least not try to force others to use it, if I can avoid it.