Team Calls - screen layout

I shut down for the night on May 11, 2021 with a “Calls” interface that worked. I’d offer a screen shot but can’t because a change was implemented that does not allow me to arrange the screen in a manner that lets me get back to what I had.

I’m sure there is brain trust somewhere that thought this was a really good idea but, I’m not confident they thought it all the way through…

Previously, Calls was an interface that allowed you to make a call to someone. The Speed Dial list is the most useful function for that because it lists all the people you want to talk to.

Left Pane:

I could care less who I made the last four calls to. If I want a history, I would go to the history section.

Center Pane:

If I wanted to view a history of who I called, I should be able to click on a “History” header where you currently have “Phone” and “Contacts”. Clean and simple. Very frustrating that the user interface does not allow modification of the column width. If you stretch the screen, you get an expansion of History instead of the Speed Dial list that you’re looking to see. This really requires attention.

Right Pane:

To me, this is the meat and potatoes of what Calls should be. Who do I want to call? I have my speed dial list of the people I want to talk to most often. If I want to look someone up I can search and add them to my Speed Dial list. Unlike the recent modification, previously, the Speed Dial list would list contacts alphabetically. What happened to that? Did I miss a memo that puts Y before A. If you must have a Right pane, how about considering adding a button to the right of Phone and Contacts for Speed Dial. That would be very handy. Looks like there is some room for it too.

General:

You have my thoughts on the “Phone” section. A moment for the “Contacts” section…  OK, so I have a list of all my contacts. It appears to be a variation of my speed dial list. I say variation because it is just a list. The tiles for each contact that existed prior to May 12 was pretty nice. You could expand or contract as you changed the window size for how many you saw in a row. The chat, email video call or call buttons were right there for each contact. Now, you have go across the screen to the far right to get to them. If you expand the window you get a lot of white space after Name. If you reduce the window you get the Name and the interface makes sure you can see their Title and Phone number but, moves the radio buttons on the right, off the screen. OK, I get that users may want to see a persons title. It seems counter intuitive though to ensure you can see their phone number. If I’m using Teams to make contact with a person, WHY would I want their phone number? Do your programmers prefer to have users pick up their phone instead of using Teams? Perhaps it’s the same group that thought having duplicate contacts is a good thing. Several of my Speed Dial contacts have duplicate entries for their phone number. Please explain the logic behind that reasoning.

Yes, I’m a disgruntled user. My hope is that if it was important enough for me to provide comments on recent changes, others might feel similarly and positive change might result.

Hopefully many people will add their opinion and then maybe MicroSoft will change. Nothing we can do at the moment other than giving our opinion / feedback