Microsoft Teams 2.0 shortcut

[ITGuyNW]

Hi all

 

Can anyone share any tips on getting a desktop shortcut for the new Teams 2.0 app? It appears it now sits in Program Files\WindowsApps but the folder it sits in will change every time there's an update.

[Jawloms]

I appreciate this doesn't answer your question, but we've stopped installing the app. The web based one does everything we need it to, and it doesn't increase every user's profile by 500mb, and it doesn't need updating.

[ITGuyNW]

Yeah the main issue with that here is the user. I tried to go all web but they simply didn't bother opening it. At least with the app it can autostart.

[Jawloms]

Stick a shortcut to the teams site in the login process?

[p858snake]

Add their browser to the start up folder

Pin it in their browsers "start up tabs" option

[old_n07]

Could you create a shortcut using the App ID instead?

 

https://sumtips.com/tips-n-tricks/create-shortcuts-for-modern-ui-apps-in-windows-8-1/

[bald_pig]

I've read elsewhere that you can create a shortcut to %localappdata%\Microsoft\WindowsApps\ms-teams.exe and it will run the new teams app

[CHiLL]

I've read elsewhere that you can create a shortcut to %localappdata%\Microsoft\WindowsApps\ms-teams.exe and it will run the new teams app

It does appear that this works for the shortcut path. We've just pushed out the new version of Teams this morning after some testing...so far so good.

[AGA]

For anyone else that comes across this thread looking for related solutions.

There are two issues we ran into using the %localappdata%\Microsoft\WindowsApps\ms-teams.exe path.

 

 

1) The shortcut won't work for any users that haven't launched the new teams yet, because they won't have the exe in their local appdata.

This is particularly an issue because new teams won't launch automatically until it has been launched manually by the user, once per PC.

It's even more of an issue if you have users that log into multiple PCs / don't have 1:1 devices, or if you clear local appdata regularly, as this issue would then reoccur for users all the time.

 

Instead we are using a shortcut to shell:appsfolder\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe!MSTeams, which we created by navigating to the shell:appsfolder in file explorer, right clicking on the new teams icon to create a new shortcut, and copying it to a shared location.

If you have the new teams as a provisioned app, then this shortcut works for all users regardless of if they have opened Teams before or not.

 

 

2) A shortcut using either of these paths will fail to deploy when using the shortcut deployment method in the 'computer' group policy preferences, because it can't find the destination file/path.

So instead we are using the 'files' group policy preference to just copy the new shortcut to all PCs public desktop.

 

[Olliedawg]

For anyone else that comes across this thread looking for related solutions.

Instead we are using a shortcut to shell:appsfolder\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe!MSTeams, which we created by navigating to the shell:appsfolder in file explorer, right clicking on the new teams icon to create a new shortcut, and copying it to a shared location.

If you have the new teams as a provisioned app, then this shortcut works for all users regardless of if they have opened Teams before or not.

 

Can confirm this works, this is the method I have used. Copied the shortcut shared desktop, works a treat.

[jareddsharp]

Something that we're trying is creating a shortcut that references the "MSTEAMS:" protocol (literally a shortcut on the desktop that uses "MSTEAMS:" as the url, without the quotes).

We're doing some testing, but it seems promising so far.

 

Specifically we're trying to create a deployment that'll dump a shortcut to the desktop to either the new version or the old version...whichever the user is currently using.

[Tefters]

*urgh* so Teams V2 is still user appdata based?

 

This is on my to do list but I was hoping they had done away with that so I could fix appdata bloat and pc rotation but nooooo M$ and their idiotic ways...

 

Looks like I will seriously be considering forcing it through a web browser shortcut because the bloat and update method of v1 was crap and people appdata ballooned so much thanks to the install and downloading of updates to appdata that when people roamed machines profile sizes meant having to run delprof2 quite regularly.

Edited February 22, 2024 by Tefters

[ITGuyNW]

I've binned off the desktop shortcut and tell them to either use the start menu and when they next use the app, pin it to their taskbar (we have 1:1 devices here for staff)

[free780]

$InstallLocation = Get-AppxPackage -Name "MSTeams" | Select-Object -ExpandProperty "InstallLocation"

Start-Process "$InstallLocation\ms-teams.exe" -WindowStyle "Minimized"

 

This will start Teams.

 

If you want to clear the cache. Untested so may remove some settings. I've attempted to maintain settings (why are they not they stored in the cloud?). This was due to the broken spellcheck a few weeks ago.

 

# Clear Teams Cache

Get-ChildItem -Recurse "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Microsoft\MSTeams\*" -exclude app_settings.json,ecs_request_param.json,ecs_settings.dat64 | Select-Object -ExpandProperty fullname |Remove-Item -Recurse