VMware Horizon Community
andraapfonden
Contributor
Contributor

Microsoft Teams + writable

Anybody been able to get Microsoft Teams working with writable volumes?

According to VMware support there is probably no way to make this work in the current version and that there are some changes needed to App Volumes and Writables before it will.

I was just curious to hear if anybody managed to get this working at all.

Symptoms is:

Teams installs fine but when started there is just a white screen.

The Teams log file says “Blocked to load files outside of app folder”

Microsoft seems to go the route of having more applications installed in the user profile which is a real hassle for the enterprise.

11 Replies
MMID
Contributor
Contributor

Did you find a solution for this problem???

With kind regards

Maurice

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DZULATTO
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

I'm having the same problem, via app volumes I can not capture microsoft teamm, I got a microsoft msi to mass install and put in the parent image.  When you start the virtual desktops it installs microsoft teams but gets a white screen.  Follow the teams logs  Were you able to solve it?

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Thanks,
Ricardo lins
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techguy129
Expert
Expert

Our solution for deploying Teams is to package it with Thinapp and delivery it in an appstack. So far its been solid for the last 3 months.

Here is a guide on using thinapps with app volumes.

https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2015/01/vmware-app-volumes-thinapp-vdi-view-integration-horizon.html

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krobertsIAA
Contributor
Contributor

Could you post the recipe for it? Teams has two installers and both are reportedly pretty unreliable.

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mrheathjones
Contributor
Contributor

Can you explain how you are capturing Teams with Thinapp? We are having a tough time getting the ThinApp to capture without .dll errors thrown.

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Poom22
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Anyone had progress with this?

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techguy129
Expert
Expert

The one thing I had to do to get it to work is to black list the executables (ex. teams.exe) from directflex. It was crashing with the .dll problem until I did that.

See this article on blacklist.xml configuration.

VMware Knowledge Base

When creating the package, don't use the .msi installer. You need to use the .exe installer that installs the app to the users appdata.

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Ray_handels
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hmmm.. Teams, interesting subject..

We needed to package this as well for our users and the very very short story is it won't work with Appvolumes Appstacks due to the simple fact that Appstacks do NOT hold user Appdata information. Apparently the application is being installing into the %APPDATA%\Local\Microsoft\Teams even if you distribute using SCCM or any other tool

The half ass witted solution provided by M$ is to copy the installer file into the Program Files directory and let it be installed during logon (see Install Microsoft Teams using MSI via SCCM | Microsoft Docs ). I'm not quite sure which clown at Microsoft came up with this solution be should be fired on the spot!!

Long story short. The only way to get this to work in VDI is by either using the web version or use the writable with profile in it because the UIA only will not capture the profile folders.

If you install it during logon you will end up with a very high CPU usage during every logon from a user..

And oh yeah, the updater is located within the installer which means you don;t have any control on what version of Teams a user is using.. If the application fails the only thing that you can do is remove the writable altogether...

Good move Microsoft.. Those MacBooks are getting more interesting by the day...

After this full rant.. It does seem that Teams works with Appvolumes 2.15, my guess is that the HookInjectionWhitelist setting does haev soemthing to do with that as teams.exe is one of the items ion that list.

RachelW
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

So what is the solution for getting Teams in the Horizon environment?  I currently have it installed on my test image and it seems to work every other time a user logs into a desktop. The first time they login, they get a white window and nothing loads.  If they logout of the desktop and grab another one Teams works great. However after several hours, I've noticed the images in Teams disappear.

We are running Horizon 7.8 and using a config file in UEM 9.3.

Also, when I am in Teams on my Horizon desktop, I see the message at the top "We weren't able to connect. Sign in and We'll try again. Sign in (link)."  It appears I am already signed in because I can see my chat messages and they are up-to-date so I'm a little confused.

Looking for some help on this one.

Thank you.

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pbastiaans
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Did you use the instructions found here:

Teams for Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs

I found it doesn't work well on the ref image, Teams loads a white box and nothing using the ALLUSER=1

Finding it works well as an Appstack, although the DEM archive is kinda big.

Anybody have anything to add?

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DaveG_QVC
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Are you redirecting or roaming the users profile? Doesn't matter if it is UEM, Persona Manager, App Sense or traditional group policy based profile redirection, it appears Teams has serious issues with it being redirected, particularly if you are using the "per machine" install vs. the traditional "per user" install. We switched to writeable volumes (you could use FSLogix if your company is E3 licensed) for profiles and all of our Teams issues went away.

Most of the issues we had with Teams all were resolved when we stopped roaming profiles (at least the AppData portion, the other folders like Desktop, Documents etc..can still be allowed to roam.)