It is a common comment on HN to say Teams is rubbish and also to ask why anyone would use it. Now we have a problem of market dominance, which demonstrates by how far the HN bubble misunderstands how ordinary people do their day to day business. This is the vacuum MS have been consistently winning in for several decades now, it would be worth you understanding it.
Now someone is about to reply that market dominance doesn't mean your app is best. If you think that in this case then you are still missing the lesson. Teams integrates with Windows OS, Azure AD, SharePoint, OneDrive, PowerPoint and Outlook in a way that is so much more useful to ordinary people than anything the other messengers do. Much of that integration is available to any app developer but they choose not to use them so continue to fall behind. Sure there will be some things Slack are not currently getting an API for, but so so much more that they don't use but could, because they don't see why it is important for users.
The only reason our 2000-employee company switched to Teams was because it was cheaper for the decision-makers (who to this day only use email - seriously!) than paying for slack. It was the only reason. The calculus is not based on features, compliance, uptime, experience, or some NPS score. It’s money.
“No one ever got fired for buying IBM” now changed to Microsoft for the 2020s.
It isn't just that Teams integrates well with the Windows world, it's that managers were already paying for 365, and now they're getting this additional app for free. Why pay for this other app you've been paying for previously? Don't discount the pure effectiveness of giving that away.
> Sure there will be some things Slack are not currently getting an API for, but so so much more that they don't use but could, because they don't see why it is important for users.
Right now, Slack is pushing their own "canvas" and "lists" features -- the UI _begs_ you to click on them. Seems like they are testing the waters to become a project management app (with tight chat integration).
This is definitely a problem in general for the open-source / Silicon Valley crowd.
In this case however the integrations you describe aren’t possible for a third party.
Microsoft has made it absurdly difficult to extend and integrate with Office, and they regularly use anti-competitive (and anti-consumer!) methods to “push” new products via first-party integration.
A random example: One drive is the default save location in MS Office apps. This can’t be turned off or customised back to local files by end-users. I have to jump through hoops every time I save a file because some product manager at Microsoft has a KPI tied their bonus.
Rather than a random example, that is an excellent example of something the competition people should focus on. SharePoint is auwful. OneDrive plus SharePoint is awesome on Windows and Mac.
Here are some random examples of things Teams does that are easy to copy from memory.
+ Azure AD integration without making it an enterprise pricing feature. SSO is such an important feature, and yet most apps seem to charge extra for it, and so price themselves out. Make sure your app privileges can be controlled by AzureAD groups.
+ Grab the org chart from Azure AD. Who does Joe Bloggs work for, who are his team. Where does he work. What is his mobile number
+ Sync the Calendar properly! Put my new meeting in Outlook properly.
Now someone is about to reply that market dominance doesn't mean your app is best. If you think that in this case then you are still missing the lesson. Teams integrates with Windows OS, Azure AD, SharePoint, OneDrive, PowerPoint and Outlook in a way that is so much more useful to ordinary people than anything the other messengers do. Much of that integration is available to any app developer but they choose not to use them so continue to fall behind. Sure there will be some things Slack are not currently getting an API for, but so so much more that they don't use but could, because they don't see why it is important for users.