Enable Teams New Meeting Experience

[bigal06]

Has anyone got a fix to enable the new Teams meeting experience on all users/workstations without them having to enable it themselves?

 

I can't find anywhere you can set this to force enable this for all users.

 

Thanks

[bigal06]

Looks like this option is enabled by default in the newer Teams desktop client but the Teams desktop client installer is terrible and installs in the %localappdata% folder. Its supposed to update itself but as we have mandatory profiles the installer has to run each time user logs in and this installs from the Machine Wide Installer which is now out of date! Will have to update the machine wide installer on all computers or think of an alternative method to install the client. Edited October 22, 2020 by bigal06

[Asgard]

We do what your suggesting and it’s crude but effective. We don’t use mandatory profiles but more akin to roaming profiles without the headaches.

 

We deploy Teams as part of Office365 ProPlus Shared Device.... we deploy updates to office, and it updates fine - except for Teams..... because of how they develop it. If it’s not updating why bundle it in the first place ! #facepalm Microsoft

 

We argued the case with Microsoft about creating a GPO to replace the files in the teams wide installer folder and they said it wouldn’t work........... We have been doing it now for a few months and it’s worked a dream.

 

in fact on Tuesday this week we updated the GPO to update 3,500 ish machines. And the way our timetable works is that either the last one or two lessons of a day are virtual (staff onsite , students at home) so we would know quickly if it didn’t work!

 

Previously user would attempt to update Teams and it would for that session- they log out / back in and it goes to the version in the installer folder.

 

Now becisse we replace the teams.exe in the teams installer folder it just works.

 

Now we just have one of the team looking at the version of the MSI twice a month then decide on an update time - along with a text file just so we can quickly see the version number.

 

Drop me a Pm and I’ll show you our bodge [emoji23]

 

In my opinion the Teams Wide Installer is a badly thought of bodge of epic proportions, especially as it won’t let you install a later teams wide installer (MSI) if there is already a teams wide installer (MSI) installed

 

Slow clap for Microsoft.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Asgard

[AJWhite1970]

Even cruder method, I download the latest .exe version of the offline teams installer to a network share and have that as the staff shortcut. If the version matches it just skips and runs teams from appdata as usual, if the installer exe is newer then the appdata version gets updated and then runs.

 

I keep an eye on this thread, 26064 has been the latest version for a while

 

 

 

 

Crude, cludgy but works...

Edited October 22, 2020 by AJWhite1970

[Asgard]

I've shared my solution with @bigal06 today but sharing it for anyone that may stumble across this;

 

*disclaimer*

like I said above, its probably not the cleanest way to do it and some people may snigger at it, but it works for us and works very well.... we use this to bypass the inability of being able in-place upgrade the Teams Wide Installer MSI

*disclaimer*

 

What we do

Cliff notes version - we download the MSI, install it and then copy the files to a share and GPO them to our endpoints - happy times

 

So to expand on that......

 

1. We download the x64 MSI from this page onto a machine (after uninstalling the old version) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/msi-deployment
   
2. We then copy the files from C:\Program Files (x86)\Teams Installer to a hidden share we use for pushing out Software/Patches/Updates
    
   
    
   
3. The Text File is more of a visual aid/version control so we can see what the version is and that it is updating - the text file just contains this
   

   *** Manual Update 04 ***
   This is the Manual Update from %% Redacted File Location %%
   
   To bring Teams upto Version - 1.3.0.21759
   
   File Version/TimeStamps
   
   setup.jspn	-	16/06/20	Size 1kb
   Teams.exe	-	04/08/20	Size 98,224kb -	Version 1.3.0.21759
   
   

   
    
   

4. We then have a GPO that copies the files from the network share to the computer (setting it to run only once). prefer this method to having it run directly off a file share - with a few thousand devices it just adds a little bit of unnecessary load onto the machines in my opinion, and the folder on the C Drive is where the computer is expecting it, because we have installed the Teams Site Wide Installer as part of Office ProPlus 365
   

[MYK-IT]

I've noticed PDQ Deploy has a 'machine-wide' Teams installer and updater package. Not sure if that'll help in relation to keep clients updated for you?