Missing (useful) Slack Features in Webex Teams

[m0110]

Hi All,

I've come from a heavy slack user background. Moving over to Webex Teams there's a few really useful features that I find are missing, wondering if they can be added to a feature request list somewhere? 

Ad-hoc groups

The current working mode assumed by webex teams seems to be either to have a single 1-to-1 chat, or to set up a space. There are often times when I need to send a message to two or 3 people. An email is overkill, as is making a space. In slack it's easy to make an "ad-hoc space" with  (up to 6) people. If the group is not used recently it disappears (but the chat history is kept in case you make it again). 

Mark Messages as Unread

Sometimes I see a message that I know I need to come back to. It's very useful to be able to set the message as unread and comeback to it later. 

Default ability to message myself

I typically run multiple devices, a laptop, desktop, mobile phone etc. In the slack world I am a default contact in my own contact list. That is, I can message myself. I can use this to copy-paste text/move files between my different devices,  etc or just as a place to store things. It's really useful. 

Reminders/slack bot (and other useful/less commands)

In slack, I can set a reminder using the format /remind [user] to [action] at [time]. At the specified time I get a notification (usually from myself - as above). This is really useful to keep track of jobs and other little tasks. There are lots of other / commands such as /open [channel] which lets me quickly move between conversations without picking up the mouse and /invite which lets me invite someone as well. /shrug adds an ASCII "shrug" (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) which is not very useful, but cool :-) 

Too many general spaces are a nuisance

I am a member of multiple teams, every team has a "general" space. This means that I have multiple "general" names in my contact list. I have to be very careful to make sure I pick the right space before sending a message. 

Linux Support 

Our entire engineering team works on Linux. Having a desktop application for Linux would be very much appreciated. All Linux users are made second class citizens right now. 

Editing Messages on Mobile

Editing messages seems to only be available on the desktop app, not on the mobile app? It's very useful to be able to do this. 

Code formatting in code blocks

It would be really useful to be able to have code blocks with code formatting. E.g. C/C++ formatting, python formatting etc. Most markdown renderers have this built in. It's really useful for sharing code in chats. 

Extending the Emoticon Set esp for reactions. 

This is not very important, but it is fun! The emoji set in slack can be extended to include custom emojis. Reactions to posts can use any/all emojis including custom ones. It's really nice :-)

Cheers!
Matt

[Jaime Valencia]

Use internal tools for this please

[m0110]

Hi Jamie, 

I don't understand this response. I'm sorry. What is HTH?

Thanks,
Matt

[netizenden]

HTH is probably 'hope that helps', which in itself probably doesn't.

I'm not an employee any more (12+ years tho), but Cisco is sadly going to be stuck in WE Teams world since they own it.

But I agree with many of the items you've mentioned.  For the community, a couple of responses here:

Code blocks:  you can do that with similar markdown to Slack, using 3 backticks:  ``` surrounding the section

Messaging self:  not sure I get this one, since in any platform (mobile/desktop/web) you'll see the same set of spaces;  I too have to be on WE Teams (for another month) so I've set up my own set of 'private' tracking spaces.  I drop links, docs, comments to myself, draw on whiteboards, etc. in the respective appropriate space, and primarily use threading to be able to quickly see my thought trends (upper right corner, select 'Threads' icon and all your threads are shown).

As for mobile editing - I see 'Edit' with long-press on a message.

I have raised a feature request because I, also coming from Slack, found it very handy to be able to select a channel and create an email address for that channel.  Thereafter, I can either set up a rule, or on a whim, forward an email - directly into that space.  Very handy for getting off the email route.  Can then (in slack) quickly send an invite to the email parties.  So far getting email into WEteams is both broken and limiting, since the only feature that exists without a third-party vendor is a bot from Cisco which then 'for security reasons' strips the entire body of the email sometime in transit... I ask you - then what's the point??  Silly

But we're moving 170K employees to Slack this month, so i'm just hopeful the IT Security org doesn't mangle it so bad it's once again useless.

Cheers!

[Ben R]

I see this thread is a couple of years old, but the items have not been addressed, so I'm adding one here. In Slack you can arbitrarily drag contacts up and down in the list and create categories. "Favorites" and "Other" is really not good enough. 

[Kathy N.]

When you click on Contacts in Webex, you should see the option to "Add a Contact" as well as "Create a group."  Please make sure you're on a current version to see this option.

[Ben R]

Kathy, Thats very helpful, thank you. I do think its a little odd/unintuitive that this feature is a separate tab from Messaging. There are still some ways that the Slack UI is both simpler and more capable, and it would be nice to see WebEx trend in that direction. 

Edit: replied too quickly. This separation of contact list from the actual message threads is not very useful at all. 

[Kathy N.]

@Ben R , I only showed one section of the tab.  This is in the Contacts area.  If you want to create "groups" in Messaging, use the Teams instead.  The spaces created in that Team then become "nested" within the team and you can easily find them.