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Hey,
A couple of years ago I set up Teams to use for all our online learning, which is tutor driven and with many students and proving to be a success, However, my boss says its rubbish and he and his team (non IT) want to use something completely different. I’m a but frustrated by his knee jerk reaction, so thought i would put it out on here to see what your views are on this and what other alternatives there are?
Thanks

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I don’t like Teams either. Microsoft keeping shoving more and more features into all their products so it just becomes a gigantic ui mess that is hard to use. Office 365 admin console for example is a nightmare to use. Not to mention that teams is/was a real resource hog. You need 4gb of ram just for teams alone.

I don’t know if Slack is suitable for online learning, but it is a very popular video conferencing system like Teams and many companies use Slack for their internal communications.

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I’m not fan of Teams, either.

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I’ve personally found Teams to be my favourite option of the two big names in this space. I’ve always found Slack to be much more confusing, though some of that confusion comes from how flexible it can be, so I’ve found that developers tend to prefer it.

While the admin side of Teams can be a pain, I’ve not personally seen much in the way of user-side issues in any of the orgs I’ve used it in once you get past the initial confusion of Teams teams vs private chats (including my Dayjob, where it’s very heavily used, even by our blue collar teams)

That said, it’s really not the ideal setup for tutor-drivin learning experiences. There are a lot of dedicated apps for that kind of interaction, though I have far less experience with any of them myself. You do have options for pinning a speaker, and sharing screens etc. but Teams is built more as a collaboration platform, not so much a teaching platform.

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Define “its rubbish”

Does your Boss have an actual claim or is it just stupid brabbling about something he has no clue of?

There are many alternatives out there.
Google Workspace
Zoom
Discord
Mattermost (self hosted)

Just tell him to define what the Software needs to fulfill.
Let him do a specification sheet and watch him struggle.

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I would ask what they have available in the budget, that way you can gather pricing and present options.

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I have used Zoom and Teams in an administrative capacity. When working in high-ed we went with Zoom and was really happy with it as a service that “just worked” especially with all of our h323/sip endpoints and our faculty/staff had generally no problems with it. Teams meeting experience on the other hand is seemingly much less intuitive and problematic for users. That is just comparing the conferencing portion. Zoom (as of my last use 1.5 years ago) did not have any sort of comprehensive channel, file sharing or collaborative features beyond chats.

For the channel, team collaborating. Check into Slack or if you want to host something yourself look into Mattermost.

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This shortfall was discovered during covid, worked in education at the time and the issues users complained of were trivial at least, but to them they were the end of times.

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2nd what Aimero said.
Define Rubbish.
Do they have an alternative in mind?
Compare / contrast.
What are key elements they would like available in the replacement?

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What features in Teams do they use? Chatting, video calls, group text, presentations?

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We use Teams for our professional collaboration, however the school went with Google Classroom with Zoom as the video face-to-face for the classes as they felt it was easier to navigate (not sure I agree, but if they like it and it works go ham my friends).

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Perhaps your boss’s boss is the one to blame. Or your boss’s, boss’s boss? Anyway, you can try and get some clarification like who, what, where, when, why from your boss. Or your boss can say, “Don’t worry about it, just give me what I want.”

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All the above features, basically we set up the classes, add in a tutor as a member, then add in all students. This is face to face with file sharing within the class, presentations, sometime tutor will interact with Whiteboard.

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Thanks for all your input, I will take all this away and drill down with my boss on what exactly what they want to achieve that isn’t already there. Also I’ll look at the alternatives that you all have mentioned. At the start of all of this, I set everything up under Microsoft as one of our key tools we use in Dynamics 365 so that everything integrates smoothly. I’;; let you know the output.
Cheers

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I’ve used Zoom quite often without a problem. The thing I like about Teams is the integration with my Outlook calendar. You might want to have this manager clarify what they are looking for and have them try a couple of things to suit his fancy.

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What do you use today for phones? Most UCaaS solutions also include full suite of collaboration tools included… RingCentral, GoTo, 8x8, Nextiva, Dialpad etc etc. These also integrate into Microsoft and other solutions too. Just another approach that would provide alternatives as well as a no cost IF looking at cloud for voice.

Happy to discuss if there is any interest in reviewing this type of solution. Y

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Feature requirements will determine options along with requirements not directly related to remote teaching.
For example if you use M365 already for other functions. Common scenarios are M365 with Teams or Google stack with Google Classrooms. Google is actually better IMHO for education as the google productivity environment is pre-tailored for education. But if the environment is used to set work, submit work, host content etc it is difficult to use a different video system e.g. M365 with Zoom would be a pain as end users need to use both.

The other option is specific remote/online learning platforms. Most large educational organizations I have encountered use one of these as they better fit their overall requirement instead of trying to adopt a corporate hosting and collaboration platform to meet their needs.

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I have used multiple tools like Teams: including Zoom, Blue Jeans, Web View and more. This article might give you some more products to look at: https://blog.appsumo.com/zoom-alternatives/#:~:text=10%20Zoom%20Alternatives%20for%20Live%20Streams%2C%20Teams%20%26,8%208.%20Best%20for%20large%20meetings%3A%20GoToMeeting%20

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Totally understand your frustration. I’ve seen this happen more than once where something that’s actually working well gets dismissed because it’s not the “new shiny thing” or wasn’t someone else’s idea. Teams definitely has its quirks, but if it’s supporting your online learning environment effectively, that deserves some recognition.

That said, if you’re being asked to explore alternatives, it might be worth looking at platforms that are more purpose-built for collaborative communication but still intuitive for non-IT teams.

One option that might be worth checking out is Wondercomm. While it’s more focused on business communication than learning platforms per se, it does support real-time collaboration, voice/video, and integrates smoothly across teams—including with some learning management tools. If your boss is looking for something that “feels” different than Teams but still keeps your setup professional and structured, it could be a good middle ground as it is one of the best ringcentral alternative and other brands like ooma, dialpad etc.