Microsoft Teams Optimization (Virtual)

by Uddave Jajoo, Indianapolis CUGC Leader

In the virtualization industry, native in-house apps are transitioning to Cloud-based platforms, either by utilizing SAAS and PAAS models. Microsoft Teams is one of those SAAS-based solutions, which was introduced by Microsoft in 2017 to transform companies to move their collaboration contents to one platform.

From the beginning, as companies started adopting Microsoft Teams, there has been lot of noise around how to implement Teams in the virtual environment. Today, we are going to see the detailed installation and configuration instructions for installing MS Teams for VDI.

Overview of MS teams for VDI on Virtual environment

Follow the Microsoft Teams machine-wide installation guidelines and specifically for virtual environments, avoid using the .exe installer that installs Teams in AppData. Instead, install in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Teams by using the ALLUSER=1 flag from the command line.

It is very important to understand the difference between ALLUSER and ALLUSERS flags:

ALLUSER=1 – This ensures that every user connecting to the machine will get the same version of MS Teams. This parameter should be used in the Shared Hosted or Non persistent VDI environments or in case of Random Pooled Catalogs. While using ALLUSER=1, the teams client does not autoupdate and system admins would have to perform updates on the master/golden images periodically to ensure the performance is optimized.

ALLUSERS=1 – This ensures that every user connecting to the machine will get the same version of MS Teams. However, the Teams client will get installed in users’ APPDATA. This parameter should be used in both Non VDI and VDI environments.

Install Microsoft Teams Client

1. Always Install VDA first on the master image.
2. Download latest version of Teams Machine Wide Installer. Choose the version based on the bit size of the Operating System
3. Run the below commands in elevated PowerShell window, to install Teams Client on the golden/master images
   • Per User Install – msiexec /i <path_to_msi> OPTIONS=”noAutoStart=true””disableGpu=true” /l*v <install_logfile_name> ALLUSERS=1

• Per Machine Install – msiexec /i <path_to_msi> OPTIONS=”noAutoStart=true””disableGpu=true” /l*v <install_logfile_name>  ALLUSER=1 ALLUSERS=1

4. If you have dedicated persistent VDI environments and you want the Teams application to auto-update and would prefer Teams to install per-user under Appdata/Local, use the .exe installer or the MSI without ALLUSER =1.
5. Post Installation of MS Teams client, perform below additional steps to optimize the Teams Client. Run in PowerShell elevated window:
   • Don’t Autolaunch – (Get-Content ${ENV:ProgramFiles(x86)}’\Teams Installer\setup.json’).replace(‘false’,’true’) | Set-Content ${ENV:PROGRAMFILES(x86)}’\Teams Installer\setup.json’
   • Also add below registry to HKCU hive via WEM or any other MDM tools to enable this registry key – BlockAllUserAutoStart with Value NULL.

• Open Minimized – (Get-Content $ENV:APPDATA\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json).replace(‘”openAsHidden”:false’,’”openAsHidden”:true’) | Set-Content $ENV:APPDATA\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json

6. Optionally – Run the PowerShell command as below:

• Remove-Item “C:\Users\Public\Desktop\Microsoft Teams.lnk”

• (Get-Content ${ENV:ProgramFiles(x86)}’\Teams Installer\setup.json’).replace(‘false’,’true’) | Set-Content ${ENV:PROGRAMFILES(x86)}’\Teams Installer\setup.json’
• (Get-Content $ENV:APPDATA\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json).replace(‘”openAsHidden”:false’,'”openAsHidden”:true’) | Set-Content $ENV:APPDATA\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json
• (Get-Content $ENV:APPDATA\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json).replace(‘”disableGpu”:false’,'”disableGpu”:true’) | Set-Content $ENV:APPDATA\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json
• Remove-ItemProperty “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run” -Name “Teams” -Force

7. Delete the Teams icon from C:\Users\Public\Desktop
8. Delete the below registry keys from the registry hive
   • If exists, delete – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
   • If exists, delete – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Upgrade Microsoft Teams Client

Before upgrading the Teams Client on the master image for non persistent VDI environment, you would first need to uninstall the older version of the client. 

Note:- Please use the respective version MSI file to perform the uninstall, as you would not able to uninstall the Teams Client using the MSI file of a different version.

1. Run the below commands in elevated PowerShell window, to install Teams Client on the golden/master images
   • Per User Install – msiexec /x <path_to_msi> OPTIONS=”noAutoStart=true””disableGpu=true” /l*v <install_logfile_name> ALLUSERS=1

• Per Machine Install – msiexec /x <path_to_msi> OPTIONS=”noAutoStart=true””disableGpu=true” /l*v <install_logfile_name>  ALLUSER=1 ALLUSERS=1

2. Install the latest version of Teams client using the instructions specified in the Install Section above.

References:

• Teams for Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs
• Optimization for Microsoft Teams (citrix.com)
• Troubleshooting HDX Optimization for Microsoft Teams (citrix.com)

Read more posts by Uddave Jajoo.

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