Products · Product
Skype for Business
Raised as a usability problem by 62 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2013–2025), in 42 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Traditional Skype can't handle group callsUnreviewed
20132026- Multiple Skype versions installed, each restricting whom the user can call2025-03-03
- Commenter finds Skype for Business not that great to use daily2020-06-07
- Poor user experience, and traditional Skype can't handle group calls2020-03-27
Copy and paste behaves badlyUnreviewed
20132026- Copy and paste behaves badly, making the app practically unusable2016-03-04
- Breaks links and basic copy/paste, wastes screen space, and feels slow and clunky2014-07-15
- Copy and paste implementation is extremely poor and frustrating to use2013-06-20
Messages don't sync across devices, so conversations get missedUnreviewed
20132026- Messages missing across devices, delayed notifications, and history lost after password change2019-08-12
- Chat history disappears when switching apps and messages land on the wrong device2017-04-20
- Messages go to phone instead of desktop, so user misses conversations after forgetting to sign out2014-02-24
Messages suddenly report as undelivered mid-chatUnreviewed
20132026- Messages land on unpredictable machines, and history is often missing or client-only2018-06-22
- Randomly redirects messages within a conversation to Outlook, making text chat bad2018-05-11
- Messages suddenly report as undelivered in the middle of a chat2017-02-14
Group chats vanish quickly, so helpful answers get missedUnreviewed
20132026- Group chats split into two windows, so replies jump to a different conversation2017-04-20
- Group chat is so painful to use that people avoid it2016-11-02
- Group chats vanish quickly, so helpful answers get missed and questions need one-to-one messages2016-03-05
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Multiple Skype versions installed, each restricting whom the user can call2025-03-03
- Clicking the call button shows a label that looks like a button, so users must click again2021-08-13
- Client freezes, drops calls and messages, and pegs CPU while idle2021-07-21
- Dragging a chat contact into status view reliably crashes the program2020-09-25
- Legacy Skype or Microsoft accounts trapped in endless login and password reset loops2020-08-28
- Commenter finds Skype for Business not that great to use daily2020-06-07
- Poor user experience, and traditional Skype can't handle group calls2020-03-27
- Client is borderline unusable for the commenter, getting in the way constantly2019-11-21
- Interface is so hard to navigate that the commenter finds it worse than GIMP2019-08-13
- Messages missing across devices, delayed notifications, and history lost after password change2019-08-12
- Interop mode breaks calls and chats with coworkers on Macs, with hassles passing between apps2019-07-12
- Many people can't figure out how to screen share2019-04-22
- Enterprise Skype is so troublesome to use it is considered a textbook failure2019-02-18
- Conversations keep getting archived, so the user can't easily continue them2018-12-01
- Replies split across threads and devices, so conversation history is unreadable; files silently fail to send2018-09-04
- Messages land on unpredictable machines, and history is often missing or client-only2018-06-22
- Screenshots from a rectangle-select tool arrive as attachments instead of inline images in chat2018-06-15
- UI is unintuitive, with weird dropdowns and buttons, and slow to start2018-06-03
- Randomly redirects messages within a conversation to Outlook, making text chat bad2018-05-11
- Pasting an error text fails as too large unless a dummy word is typed first2018-05-11
- Mac version of the software is ridiculously bad to use2018-05-10
- Screen sharing sometimes simply doesn't work2018-05-10
- Messages appear out of order; text copying is unreliable; calls blocked by other logged-in accounts2018-05-10
- Can't copy and paste from chat; messages lost or sent to wrong group2018-05-10
- Awful UI/UX, painful to use, calls struggle to get everyone connected2018-05-10
- Described as having a horrible user experience, with no specific problem named2018-02-11
- Ignores system DPI settings, so some elements are huge and others tiny, wasting screen space2018-01-12
- People struggle with the video chat interface in every meeting, and even regular users forget how it works2018-01-11
- Microsoft made Skype worse in some respects after acquisition, rebranding Lync as Skype for Business2017-09-01
- Screen sharing is slow to sync and silently stops updating mid-call2017-08-18
- Tapping a notification opens an empty chat; the message is lost and sits on the desktop2017-07-28
- Voicemail auto-transcription emails are nonsensical, making messages hard to understand2017-07-04
- Cannot turn off highlights in group messages; features randomly fail to work2017-07-03
- Lync is described as unusable without saying what goes wrong2017-06-15
- Status indicator stuck on away after 49.7 days uptime, unusable until reboot2017-06-13
- Screen sharing is so laggy that it is effectively unusable most of the time2017-05-02
- Cannot show log history for a contact, unlike older logging that was searchable2017-04-21
- Shows random offline durations, like 168 days or 35 minutes, to coworkers2017-04-21
- Group chats split into two windows, so replies jump to a different conversation2017-04-20
- Chat history disappears when switching apps and messages land on the wrong device2017-04-20
- Can't find how to view past chat conversations; doesn't match standard scroll-up behavior2017-03-08
- UI takes too much screen space, settings are hard to find, notifications are invasive2017-02-22
- Pasted text gets altered: quotes become unicode and characters turn into smileys2017-02-14
- Messages suddenly report as undelivered in the middle of a chat2017-02-14
- Interface is terrible, and users can't tell when a colleague is available without the boss seeing it2017-01-07
- Group chat is so painful to use that people avoid it2016-11-02
- Buying an account is confusing; people can't find the download and get an unusable email-less account2016-06-13
- Group chats vanish quickly, so helpful answers get missed and questions need one-to-one messages2016-03-05
- Screen sharing is slow to the point of being unpleasant2016-03-05
- Interface is considered among the worst to use2016-03-05