Microsoft Teams (New) - Deployment in Edu

[KyleWhite]

Hi All.

 

We've deployed the Microsoft Teams client for a long time now as we would any other normal piece of software, via an MSI with GPO.

 

We've never had any issues with this - it's just worked. The only caveat seems to be multiple versions of Teams appear in the Start Menu which often causes confusion - a Personal one (part of the OS?) and the Work / School one which we deploy.

 

We're now starting to see the notifications within the application(s) stating that the 'New Teams' needs to be installed and that the existing client will stop working soon.

 

After having a look at the Microsoft New Teams downloads page - they only seem to be providing an MSIX file now, which obviously we can't deploy via the traditional means. Their guidance suggests manually installing (not viable! 500+ devices), or rolling out using InTune, Config Manager, etc which we don't have (budget is LIMITED to say the least!).

 

Whilst experimenting with some manual installs, a few of these installations failed as they sometimes required this pre-requisite: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2249905&clcid=0x809&culture=en-gb&country=gb

 

I've done a bit of Googling but I'm not seeing much on doing this in the 'retro' way! I did come across a YouTube video of someone converting the MSIX to MSI, but when I tried this - it never seemed to ever install...

 

What I'd like to do is create some kind of GPO that removes / cleans up all the older versions and redundant versions of Teams and roll out the New client - making things as simple as possible for everyone.

 

Have any of you come across the same issue? To quote the Sub-section - "How do you do it?"

 

Any suggestions greatly appreciated,

 

Thanks

 

Kyle

[notsogenius]

Hi All.

 

We've deployed the Microsoft Teams client for a long time now as we would any other normal piece of software, via an MSI with GPO.

 

We've never had any issues with this - it's just worked. The only caveat seems to be multiple versions of Teams appear in the Start Menu which often causes confusion - a Personal one (part of the OS?) and the Work / School one which we deploy.

 

We're now starting to see the notifications within the application(s) stating that the 'New Teams' needs to be installed and that the existing client will stop working soon.

 

After having a look at the Microsoft New Teams downloads page - they only seem to be providing an MSIX file now, which obviously we can't deploy via the traditional means. Their guidance suggests manually installing (not viable! 500+ devices), or rolling out using InTune, Config Manager, etc which we don't have (budget is LIMITED to say the least!).

 

Whilst experimenting with some manual installs, a few of these installations failed as they sometimes required this pre-requisite: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2249905&clcid=0x809&culture=en-gb&country=gb

 

I've done a bit of Googling but I'm not seeing much on doing this in the 'retro' way! I did come across a YouTube video of someone converting the MSIX to MSI, but when I tried this - it never seemed to ever install...

 

What I'd like to do is create some kind of GPO that removes / cleans up all the older versions and redundant versions of Teams and roll out the New client - making things as simple as possible for everyone.

 

Have any of you come across the same issue? To quote the Sub-section - "How do you do it?"

 

Any suggestions greatly appreciated,

 

Thanks

 

Kyle

 

 

We used the Teamsbootstrapper.exe from here -https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/new-teams-bulk-install-client with the -p switch which seems to be working well for us.

[ITGuyNW]

I clean the system of previous Teams first

 

$Apps = Get-AppxPackage | Where-Object { $_.Name -like "*Teams*" }FOREACH ($App in $Apps) {Remove-AppxPackage -Package $App.PackageFullName}

 

then either teamsbootstrapper.exe -p if downloading from online is not a problem or locally teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o "c:\Teams2024\MSTeams-x64.msix"

[Olliedawg]

We used the Teamsbootstrapper.exe from here -https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/new-teams-bulk-install-client with the -p switch which seems to be working well for us.

 

Also used this. You need the bootstrapper & the msix

 

Place them somewhere on the network accessible to users (read only perhaps) & run this (we used Senso to mass rollout)

 

\\FILESERVER\software$\NewTeams\teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o \\FILSERVER\software$\NewTeams\MSTeams-x64.msix

 

Installs the new teams, supposedly "upgrades" old teams to the new one if present, however this doesn't seem to work. I just uninstalled the old teams via GPO (we installed through GPO so was easy enough)

[KyleWhite]

Ok, so I'll trigger the removal of the old version via the existing GPO to begin with.

 

As for the deployment/running of the bootstrapper & msix, would this work if I added it to a startup script (within a GPO)? We don't use Senso or anything, so we're as 'Vanilla' as possible for rollouts

 

Thank you so much again for all of your quick responses!

 

Thanks,

 

Kyle

[Olliedawg]

Ok, so I'll trigger the removal of the old version via the existing GPO to begin with.

 

As for the deployment/running of the bootstrapper & msix, would this work if I added it to a startup script (within a GPO)? We don't use Senso or anything, so we're as 'Vanilla' as possible for rollouts

 

Thank you so much again for all of your quick responses!

 

Thanks,

 

Kyle

 

I'd imagine this would work as a login script, I cant see why not!

 

Test it on a spare machine or a small group of users

[STK91]

Hi,

 

We have literally just done all this.

 

We use the teams bootstrapper to deploy as mentioned above on startup via GPO. The majority of the machines have 'New' teams already on though automatically.

 

Old teams leaves so much rubbish behind - we run this at startup 'MsiExec.exe -x {731F6BAA-A986-45A4-8936-7C3AAAAA760B} /quiet' which uninstalls the teams machine wide installer, as per: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-classic-client-uninstall Once any user profiles which had the old teams on have been cleared up, there won't be any instances and should just be left with New Teams.

Edited June 13, 2024 by STK91

[KyleWhite]

Hey all,

 

Just a quick update, I've tried on a few different machines with the following as a startup script (BAT):

 

MsiExec.exe -x {731F6BAA-A986-45A4-8936-7C3AAAAA760B} /quiet
cd /D "%~dp0"
teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o "\\XXXX\Software$\MSTeams-x64.msix"

Which has worked a treat so far - it's removed the Machine Wide installer (albeit in front of my eyes, as I wondered why it hadn't worked then I watched it disappear from the Start Menu a few seconds later!), and installed the New Teams - great!

 

One FINAL query - this leaves me with the following:

 

 

Is there any reliable way of removing the personal version of Teams via batch script? Or is that not advisable as it's baked into the OS so to speak?

 

Again - I can't thank you all enough!

 

Kyle

Edited June 13, 2024 by KyleWhite

[KyleWhite]

Just a quick update - I've made a slight amendment to the startup script:

MsiExec.exe -x {731F6BAA-A986-45A4-8936-7C3AAAAA760B} /quiet
cd /D "%~dp0"
PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass "\\XXXX\Scripts\RemoveTeamsPersonal.ps1"
teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o "\\XXXX\Software\MSTeams-x64.msix"

The Powershell script that's called does the following (courtesy of https://poweronplatforms.com/remove-personal-teams-from-windows-11/):

If ($null -eq (Get-AppxPackage -Name MicrosoftTeams -AllUsers)) { Write-Output “Microsoft Teams Personal App not present”}Else { Try { Write-Output “Removing Microsoft Teams Personal App” If (Get-Process msteams -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) { Try { Write-Output “Stopping Microsoft Teams Personal app process” Stop-Process msteams -Force Write-Output “Stopped” } catch { Write-Output “Unable to stop process, trying to remove anyway” } } Get-AppxPackage -Name MicrosoftTeams -AllUsers | Remove-AppPackage -AllUsers Write-Output “Microsoft Teams Personal App removed successfully” } catch { Write-Error “Error removing Microsoft Teams Personal App” }}

This seems to take a few seconds to run after they've logged in - but it mops up everything and leaves them with the New Teams and that's it!

 

Thank you so much again for all of your help, hopefully this helps someone else in the future too!

 

Kyle

Edited June 13, 2024 by KyleWhite