Thanks for the suggestions - I've just had another look and disagree about the reduction in functionality.
My classic teams contact list in chat looks like this:
- separate groups of contacts (Developers \ Engineers etc).
- all contacts shown at all times and a single click loads the chat on the right.
In the new teams I have lost the ability to have contact groups. Yes I can pin certain chats, but I still only have two groups (pinned and recent). I've lost the ability to have my own groups of contacts which I like. Furthermore it's giving a preview of the last chat for each person which makes the list look cluttered compared to above.
If I choose Calls > Contacts, it just takes me to the People app. Sure, I can pin that to the left but I don't see "the same Contact list from Classic Teams" - am I still missing something?
The above view does show that my contacts are still in the groups I defined for them, but now all the contacts are shown in the main display area. I can't just click on someone's name on the left and see the chat on the right, like I do with the old teams.
I fully appreciate not many people will care about this, however from my perspective the old UI presented me a clean and intuitive way of working. All contacts are shown at all times, where I want them, in groups. I can click between the contacts I regularly talk to, within the same view.
I agree the closest is "pinning" contacts in the chat list. I've still lost the ability to show the clean layout I'm used to though. I don't see why they've removed the ability to add new groups and "pin" contacts within those groups. Previously I had 4 buckets that I defined, where I could place users - now I have 1 bucket with a fixed name of "Pinned". For me this is a backwards step and a reduction in the functionality I'm used to.