At Microsoft, obviously, we’re required to use Teams for communication (instead of Slack, Google Chat, Discord, etc). I’ll be honest, there is not much that I actually like about Teams. But one of the most minor and frustrating things is how much they’ve limited your ability to express reactions to messages.
Acceptable reactions for Microsoft workplaces:
👍 - thumbs-up (generic yellow skintone) ❤️ - red heart 😆 - grinning face with squinting eyes 😮 - surprised face with open mouth 🙁 - slightly frowning face 😡 - red angry face
And then, really pushing the boundaries here, did you know that you can send emoji reactions in Outlook too? Unsurprisingly, this list is limited and different to what’s available in Teams. Why? I don’t know, but if I were to guess I’d say that it’s because the internal teams working on these features have never communicated and there is likely zero product-level strategy alignment.
👍 - thumbs-up (generic yellow skintone) ❤️ - red heart 🎉 - party popper 😂 - face with tears of joy 😮 - surprised face with open mouth 😢 - crying face (single tear)
/sarcasm