Disabling Teams Creation Prompt in SharePoint Online

The other day a customer asked me why when they access to SPO TS, appears the owners an option saying that a Team has not been associated with a SharePoint Online site, like the image above:

In same scenarios this could lead a problem, taking into account that this kind of things should be governed from the governance plan.

In this case, we can use some PowerShell to hide some propertybags in SPO to hide this option to all users, leading to us to create Teams from the admin site directly.

So we can execute the following:

$tenant = "https://spotenant-admin.sharepoint.com"
$web = "https://spotenant.sharepoint.com/sites/Modernsposite"

Connect-PnPOnline -Url $tenant -SPOManagementShell
$site = Get-PnPTenantSite -Detailed -Url $web
if ($site.DenyAddAndCustomizePages -ne 'Disabled') {
    $site.DenyAddAndCustomizePages = 'Disabled'
    $site.Update()
    $site.Context.ExecuteQuery()
}

Set-PnPPropertyBagValue -Key 'TeamifyHidden' -Value 'True'

Once this has been done, if you refresh the homepage after setting the value, the dialog box to create Teams should no longer appear.

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Microsoft Teams: How to clean cache

If you want to clear MS Teams cache,you could refer to the following ways

1.  Fully exit the Microsoft Teams desktop client. To do this, either right click Teams from the Icon Tray and select ‘Quit’, or run Task Manager and fully kill the process.

2.  Go to File Explorer, and type in %appdata%\Microsoft\teams.

3.  Once in the directory, you’ll see a few of the following folders:

• From ‘Application Cache’, go to Cache and delete any of the files in the Cache location. “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\application cache\cache”
• From ‘Blob_storage’, delete any files that are located in here if any. “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\blob_storage”
• Within ‘Cache’, delete all files “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\Cache”
• Within ‘databases’, delete all files “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\databases”
• Within ‘GPUCache’, delete all files “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\GPUcache”
• Within ‘IndexedDB’, delete the .db or .ldb file “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\IndexedDB”
• Within ‘Local Storage’, delete all files “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\Local Storage”
• Lastly, from ‘tmp’, delete any file “%appdata%\Microsoft\teams\tmp” and”%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds”

For macOS, this would be the magic folder: /Users/user_name/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Teams. (thanks to Lucian Naie (@lnaie) for the contribution)

• Batch Version (credits to @jared)

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\blob_storage\*”

FOR /D %%p IN (“%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\blob_storage\*”) DO rmdir “%%p” /s /q

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\cache\*”

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\databases\*”

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\gpucache\*”

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\IndexedDB\*”

FOR /D %%p IN (“%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\IndexedDB\*”) DO rmdir “%%p” /s /q

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\Local Storage\*”

FOR /D %%p IN (“%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\Local Storage\*”) DO rmdir “%%p” /s /q

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\tmp\*”

del /F/Q/S “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Teams\backgrounds\*”

• PowerShell Version (credits to @synikil and @Salim Hurjuk)

Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\application cache\cache\*”
Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\blob_storage\*”
Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\databases\*”
Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\GPUcache\*”
Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\IndexedDB\*” -recurse
Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\Local Storage\*” -recurse
Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\tmp\*”

Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\Cache\*”

Remove-Item –path $env:APPDATA”\Microsoft\teams\backgrounds\*”

• For CCleaner User (kudos to @Robert Franco)

[Microsoft Teams *]

LangSecRef=3021

Default=True

DetectFile=%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Teams

FileKey1=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\application cache\cache|*|RECURSE

FileKey2=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\blob_storage|*|RECURSE

FileKey3=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\Cache|*|RECURSE

FileKey4=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\databases|*|RECURSE

FileKey5=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\GPUcache|*|RECURSE

FileKey6=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\IndexedDB|*|RECURSE

FileKey7=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\Local Storage|*|RECURSE

FileKey8=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\tmp|*|RECURSE

FileKey9=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams\Service Worker\CacheStorage|*|REMOVESELF

;remove previous version:

FileKey10=%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Teams\previous\|*.*|REMOVESELF

FileKey15=%AppData%\Microsoft\Teams|old_logs_*.txt

Once finally done clearing, you can now restart Teams from your local desktop and all cache will be cleared from the desktop app.

Limit who can post in general channel of Microsoft Teams

As we know, each Team of Microsoft Teams include a General channel, by default all users can post in that channel, but you can limit who can post in that channel. For example imagine that you want to use that channel to post the rules of the Team.

In each Team, we can configure the following levels:

• Everyone can post (the default setting)
• Everyone and display an alert that everyone in the Teams will be notified
• Just the Teams owner

To change the default permissions we must be a Team owner and do the following procedure:

• Select the 3 dots of the Team, then Manage Team

• Settings, under Member permissions, we can see the 3 options, select which option fits better to your Team

And it’s all set!

Developer preview in Teams and Planner integration

After seeing that MS is launching new features to Microsoft Teams via developer Preview, I decided to enable it and try it. But for my surprise, this option was not enabled in my tenant, so I struggled how to activate it.

First I navigate to: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/setup#3-enable-sideloading-of-apps-for-microsoft-teams where is it possible to find the instructions of how to activate. In my case the steps to follow where pretty simple:

• Go to the admin center
• Settings, select Services & add-ins or Apps
• From the list of services and add-ins, or apps, select Microsoft Teams.
• On the Microsoft Teams settings screen, switch both Allow external apps in Microsoft Teams and Allow sideloading of external apps to On, and then select Save.

After doing that, I went to https://teams.microsoft.com and under my profile I was able to select the Developer Preview:

Accept the dialog:

And start with the new available features in this mode. One of these new available features is Planner, well done Microsoft 🙂

Is great to see how Microsoft is improving the collaboration in Teams, and in this case bringing Planner to the app, instead of having to add the plan as a tab.

With this implementation, we can see all our assigned tasks in Planner, in addition to that able to edit the tasks, assign tasks to other users. It’s like accessing to Planner, but integrated into Teams.

We have different views, where we can group by tasks or even by plan, is important to show all our assigned tasks.

To close this post, I have to add that this new feature it is only available via web, I expect that this implementation will be also added soon to Microsoft Teams desktop and mobile app.

16/11/2017 Edit: Once again Juan Carlos Gonzalez is right 🙂 ,  developer view is it already available in desktop app, so is it possible to take advantage from the Planner integration. Thanks again!

PowerShell for Microsoft Teams

Last week, Microsoft made available new PowerShell Modules, in this case was for Microsoft Teams, and I have to say that it is wonderful, because since then, we were obliged to use the Office 365 Groups PowerShell commands, and not all the commands fulfill the use case.

First of all, we need to install the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module:

Once we have installed the commands, as is needed for each O365 service, we’ll need to connect to it:

If we want to see all the available commands, we will need to put the following:

As it can be seen, the list of cmdlets is a bit short, but I’m sure that will grow and will improve the capabilities and also the availble features.

Till next time!

Skype to Teams Roadmap

Yesterday was announced in the Techcommunity the roadmap for Microsoft Teams.

I want to highlight the integration between the Skype For Business client and the Microsoft Teams client. With this integration we will be able to share the presence, contacts between this two applications and even to call between this two applications. In a near future, we will have the PSTN calling plans for Teams and more features yet to come.

If you want more information about this, visit the following link: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Roadmap-for-Skype-for-Business-capabilities-coming-to-Microsoft/bc-p/120002#M340

How to troubleshoot Microsoft Teams

Many clients are adopting Microsoft Teams as the central tool for productivity and collaboration, it is great to see an application that unifies functionalities like video, call and the collaboration tools from SharePoint as well as the integration with other applications or even third party applications.

But, what happens when the Microsoft Teams application fails? Where we can troubleshoot what is happening?

It is true that we can navigate to the Tech Community to try to research for some information, but its not the best, so how we can obtain more information?

By using the magic key combination: Ctrl – Shift – Alt – 1

We will be able to download a log file:

Where we will see pieces of JSON formatted text and the most interesting part, lines that have time stamp and message level and of course, an error message.

Also, we have the leves categorized as:

 

• War : Warning
• Err: Error
• Inf: Information

So, doing this we will be able to troubleshoot Microsoft Teams, and at least obtain a clue of what the hell is happening with the app.

Hope that helps!

Teams VS Slack

Most of my clients are evaluating Microsoft Teams as an alternative to Slack. To be honest, are completely different, but some features are overlapped between them.

I have found this infographic from Techwyse that probably will help some of you to clear your mind about this two collaborative tools.