this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026

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181

Microsoft Teams is getting a controversial location tracking feature that users may hate (www.neowin.net)

submitted 7 hours ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] alphacyberranger@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Users "may" hate?

[–] RedditRefugee69420@lemmy.world 1 points 7 minutes ago

Many also do not care, unfortunately.

Let's not get that Lemmy echo chamber vibe where a few dozen of us agree that millions of Windows users don't exist.

[–] manmachine@lemmy.world 85 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

Was there ever a MS Teams feature anyone actually liked? Seems like the whole product is based on loathing.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 18 points 4 hours ago

Teams isn't made for the users.

[–] Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

If your whole ecosystem is in azure, it kind of works. Similar to gsuite

[–] twack@lemmy.world 1 points 33 minutes ago

... For the admin. It's easy for the admin. That's not the users.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

They recently cribbed the Catch Up feature directly from Slack. I’m a big fan of that. Come up with a good feature on their own? Nah.

[–] SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I mean, that has been Microsoft’s MO for their entire existence. With the exception of maybe some versions of Visual Studio, everything they have done was see what they can copy off their competitors.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 points 29 minutes ago

Wasn’t the original Visual Studio just Borland Turbo C++ with a non-ascii GUI?

[–] br3d@lemmy.world 18 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Good to remember that the client for Teams isn't you - it's your IT department

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 42 minutes ago

Lol, are you kidding? IT gets to experience the suck of using it, and of administrating it. For as bad as the front end of Microsoft stuff is, the back end is usually worse.

[–] scops@reddthat.com 31 points 5 hours ago

No, it's upper management. I don't give a fuck what you're doing all day as long as it doesn't create security vulnerabilities in the environment

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

I bet some employers love that shit. They are Microslop Teams‘ main customers. Making our life miserable is a feature.

[–] PlantJam@lemmy.world 26 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Microsoft says that this feature is basically a replacement for physical workplace check-in peripherals, it reduces the need to manually update your status

Considering how much I have to manually fix my regular teams status, I have doubts as to how effective this will be.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

It would be very useful me to know if a colleague is in the office or not without the need to message them and wait for answer.

But yes, I have to fix my status roughly once per day, so I have doubt this feature will work properly.

[–] kaml@lemmy.world 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

wasnt it only yesterday that Gremlin Satya Nutella was telling employees they should not be tracking their staff?

[–] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Nutella gremlins?

[–] folekaule@lemmy.world 21 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

My company device already has so much surveillance on it that this won't make a meaningful difference to me.

However, given that they can't even get my activity status right, I don't see it going well. For example It sets me we idle even if I'm typing furiously in my editor, unless I go wave my mouse cursor in Teams for a few seconds. Other chat apps got this right decades ago.

It doesn't deliver messages or delivers them out of order. Unread status on messages doesn't work right. It crashes randomly. I could go on.

Fix the core functionality, Microsoft, instead of adding all kinds of big brother bullshit. I don't trust Teams to get anything right and neither should my manager.

[–] curbstickle@anarchist.nexus 4 points 3 hours ago

Even better when you have multiple machines logged in.

I am simultaneously presenting in a call and magically away from my desk, soon to be while working remotely and sitting at a desk in the office.

Fucking idiots.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 20 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I look forward to everyone being shown as located in the major city where our VPN is listed instead of where we actually are. That's how it works for browsers and other location based functionality now.

[–] harmony@piefed.blahaj.zone 16 points 6 hours ago

Even without VPN, IP-based location has always shown me in all sorts of random places, sometimes even in the opposite end of my country. Guess it's an ISP thing.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

This is using your office network/wifi SSID to set your location status in Teams. It’s not sharing your location when you’re nothing the office.

Also, it’s opt-in.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 28 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Hmm...

Image generated with Microsoft Copilot

[–] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 31 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Wow, and what an image…

[–] justsomeguy@lemmy.world 12 points 6 hours ago

Should give the teams logo a whip at this point

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 8 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Is it possible to hate Teams more?

[–] yakko@feddit.uk 1 points 27 minutes ago

Always.

[–] magnue@lemmy.world 17 points 6 hours ago

Location: at work.

[–] cinaeth@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

Hopefully this change will get rid of some scammers who use teams to recruit for fake jobs

[+] Fizz@lemmy.nz -38 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Controversial opinion but this is perfectly fine to enable in an enterprise environment. If you're being paid to work and you're lucky enough to be trusted to work from home its fine to force employees to have location services enabled. Not like there isnt a million other ways to see where they are.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 14 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's irrevelant where somebody is, as long as the assigned work is completed. Are you an insecure middle manager by chance?

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz -4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Im not a manager but im just struggling to see how you habe such a narrow view of work that you think its that linear. Most roles do require inter team and department cooperation and in those cases it's nice to be able to check teams and see if someone's in the office because then you can go talk to them directly.

Why is knowing if someone is wfh or in office such a bad thing to you? Also where someone is is not irrelevant there are plenty of restrictions around work locations.

[–] theherk@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago

Yo, I was hoping to chat about fizzing buzzes today. You in the office; wanna grab coffee? If you prefer you can call or we can just chat on slack? Anyway I thought it would be best if we foo’d the bars in that order on project A.

Easy. No naked ping. No pressure. Question already in the open. No expectations. Will find out if able to meet in person. Will get an initial response.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 25 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

i'm fine with company property having tracking, but as long as i'm doing my job i don't see why my employer needs to know were i am. and that's despite me preferring to work on location.

[+] Fizz@lemmy.nz -21 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (4 children)

I work in a big office, I want to know if the person is in office, working from home or offsite somewhere. This feature will automatically update the status to give that info. I dont see how its hard to understand why that is a useful feature. Also I said enterprise environment its assumed these are company devices.

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 30 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I have never once had an issue with this.

Know why? Because I work with responsible adults. Once you start treating adults like little kids with no agency, you’re opening the floodgates for the control schemes which finally start to affect you personally.

What could your employer do that would overstep your personal boundaries? By handwaving this one away, you’re enabling them to cross your line later. You must see that, yes? It’s clear to everyone else.

You are not doing yourself any service, even if you think you’re just “sitting this one out.”

[+] Fizz@lemmy.nz -14 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Im glad that people in your office are responsible enough to keep their teams status updated but many don't and in a big company with majority hybrid workers this will be a useful feature and I look forward to it being enabled since im always in office.

Your comment is wild I have to ask what you think you're fighting here? How does updating a teams status to display if you're working in the office or at home over step boundaries and open the floodgates for big scary control schemes? If its a company device this changes nothing, if they want to track your location they wont be using this teams feature. if they want to micromanage you or spy on you they wont be using this teams feature.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 2 points 2 hours ago

i've worked in multiple organisations of over 100 000 employees with majority hybrid workers and this has never come up. can you explain what positives this information will give you?

[–] baines@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 hour ago

what moron cares about updated teams statuses? that sounds like such a painful office environment

[–] lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago

If you can’t see it, it’s either willful ignorance or a chasm too wide for me.

Best of luck, you’re going to need it

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 14 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Because working from home doesn't really mean you have to be in your house as long as you're working. Just like you don't have to actually eat on your lunch break. If you can't trust me then why am I still working for you?

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Then ask

[–] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Two reasons:

The feature likely won't work as well as you might think. What happens when you leave for 10 minutes to get some lunch, and that's when your boss's boss checks your location and it says you're working from home or something. And now you get written up because you're supposed to be in the office three days per week. I get this is a specific and convoluted example, but stuff like this happens--a feature is released, and management is too stubborn to take things with a grain of salt (or they otherwise won't consider the limitations).
You're assuming they're only using your location data to update your in/out status. Neither MS nor your employer will ever be content to only use limited information when they have access to more. And while it would be somewhat limited if it were only on work devices, understand that a lot of employers expect people to install this shit on their personal devices (I was the only holdout in my department who wouldn't/couldn't install MS authenticator on my phone, it was a whole thing).

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 hours ago

I had a boss that would teams-call me when I was on the toilet. I don’t think it was malicious, just inconvenient. He was a dick about it though, so maybe he was watching my status.

The Authenticator app is one of the the least invasive pieces of software you could install on your phone, so you’re on your own there. But we just get a Yubikey and it’s their problem.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz -5 points 6 hours ago

Leave your device? But really you'll be able to say you were getting lunch and since you return 10mins later they'll see you're in the office. If they dont accept that then you'd be cooked with or without this feature.
Saying neither MS or your employer will ever be content to only use limited information when they have access to more is a stupid point considering that both parties already have access to more information than this feature will provide. If they are bringing a personal device its probably already registered into some MDM software for basic device management of company assets and that provides them with more control than this will. If they dont then the company is probably to small and not interested in gathering this info or doing anything with it.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world -2 points 4 hours ago

Agreed. It’s updating your status to in-office and updating your office room location.

Many hybrid workforces already have software that’s doing this as part of desk hoteling.

If you’re online and not in the office, it’s not updating your location to your home address.

This is useful for coworkers to figure out where they are at so they can sit close. It might not sound like a useful feature at first but consider how large a campus like Microsoft is. Knowing what building and floor someone is at makes it much easier to work together.

Some of the other responses here make it sound like they’ve never signed in with a badge before.