In projects inclined to the Microsoft ecosystem, Teams is probably the best collaboration option, especially if your team members are dislocated. Probably because using different Office 365 accounts i had a hard time getting the Teams-Addin to work with Outlook. This is a know problem as you can find numerous articles on the web from people asking for help about this issue. Microsoft is working to enhance the Teams / Outlook experience.
One especially helpful article was Missing Teams Outlook Add-in by Michael LaMontagne (@RealTimeUC). Michael was the only one trying to dig deeper into the nitty-gritty details of COM-registration between Outlook and the Teams .NET application, deployed using Squirrel.Windows (as most Electron-based desktop-apps on Windows, e.g. Slack etc.).
He finally got the Teams-AddIn working by duplicating registry keys from a working machine. However, after reviewing the Teams & Teams Meeting AddIn startup behavior, it's even simpler.
The Microsoft Teams application always COM-registers the Team-Addin for Outlook.
However, if not enabled for your Outlook/Office365 subscription it deletes a few registry keys on startup, namely HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\TeamsAddin.Connect
- so Outlook simply won't load it on startup.
So here is how to hack the Teams Meeting Button into Outlook, cf. start_outlook_teams.bat:
- Start Teams (deletes registry keys!)
- Add registry keys from
enable_teams.reg
- Start Outlook
Enjoy the New Teams Meeting ribbon button in the calendar view!
Unfortunately, you will have repeat this everytime you restart Teams.
Hi Marcel, great article
Is there a way that Teams meeting details can be added to every new Outlook meeting without the user having to click the addin ?
thanks