How do we improve the user experience where Microsoft has failed? Solution: Improve the User ExperienceĪs much as I would enjoy writing an essay about how frustrating it is to see many norms of software installation be violated by Microsoft that is not what we are here for! We care about the users. If you run this binary without the -checkInstall parameter you can see it will perform a Teams installation every time, instead of only when not found.Īlright alright, this is boring. The command found in the registry has a -checkInstall parameter. This would change on a 32-Bit operating system accordingly with the registry key falling under HKLM\Software, and the Teams.exe being found under the C:\Program Files’ directory.Īn interesting note here is a Run key runs EVERY time a user logs in. This causes the %ProgramFiles% environment variable to resolve to ‘C:\Program Files (x86)’ for example. Keep in mind this falls under the WOW6432Node section of the registry on a 64-Bit operating system. The command which is executed is ‘ %ProgramFiles%\Teams Installer\Teams.exe -checkInstall -source=default’ %ProgramFiles%\Teams Installer\Teams.exe -checkInstall -source=default Microsoft is leveraging a Run Key in order to execute a command line every time a user logs in. Existing user profiles will receive Teams on their next login as well.
#Download teams machine wide installer windows
For some reason, Microsoft states it a bit strangely, ‘Whenever a user signs into a new Windows User Profile…’ But really it does not have to be a new user profile. This is pretty well noted by various people on the internet and Microsoft makes a note of it in their docs here. By default, every user will have Teams installed in their own user profile the next time they log in once the machine-wide installer is in place. Instead, it stages the binaries in the ‘Program Files (x86)’ directory, depending on OS Architecture, where each user will call the installer at a later time. The Teams Machine Wide installer is not what the user will ‘run’ on a day-to-day basis. To solve this we will dig in to… What’s Going On Here? The user is left with a message claiming Teams is ‘ Installed’ when clearly it is not. In particular when the Teams Machine Wide installer is finished, and detected by your application management tool of choice it does… nothing. I’m sure someone was not happy about the overall user experience. Have you or a loved one ever deployed Microsoft Teams in an enterprise environment? Did the users complain? Did project management complain? Management? You?
The Problem: Teams Machine Wide Installer finishes… Then… Nothing?