How to deploy the Teams Service App to a Customer

Stephen Boss Updated by Stephen Boss

Introduction

Two different Teams apps are available with Thread.

  • Internal Teams App - This is the app you deploy into your organization's (MSP) environment if you are using Teams as your internal collaboration tool. It allows you to interface with tickets and threads as the MSP.
  • Customer Teams App - This is the white labeled app that you can deploy to your customers' environments. It embeds Messenger as an iframe within the app and includes a service bot that customers can interact with and get updates on tickets/threads. Click here to learn more about customizing your apps' design.
💡As the MSP, you can deploy both the Internal Teams app AND the Customer Teams App to your internal teams environment. Give it a Try!

We recommend deploying chat to yourselves first - it will help your team learn the platform and provide a great testing environment before you deploy to your customers. If you don't use Teams or not able to deploy to yourselves, check out our guide on deploying to a sandbox environment.

Deploy Teams app to your Customer

If you've gotten this far and haven't finished customizing Messenger and your Teams app, you will want to make sure that you've finished Setting up Messenger.

If Messenger and the Teams app is customized the way you like it, then you are all clear to proceed.

This process can be repeated for all of your customers using Teams. Once you get the hang of it, the entire process can take 3 minutes per customer, end-to-end.
  1. (Optional Step) It is recommended that you open up a separate browser session from your normal session by using your browser's Guest or Incognito modes.
    We recommend Guest or Incognito mode for this section because you want to make sure you are signing into the correct Microsoft Teams environment.
  2. Sign-in to the Thread Admin Panel and Navigate to the Clients tab.
  3. Use the Magnifying Glass to search for the Company you'd like to deploy to and select it.
  4. After clicking into the client, navigate to the Teams/Slack Connect Tab.
  5. Select Microsoft Teams and click Continue.
  6. Choose the Teams app you wish to deploy to the customer's Microsoft 365 environment and click Continue.
  7. On the following screen, you will be presented with a couple options:
    1. Email Invite - Use this option when you don't have admin access to the Customer's Teams environment, and you need another Admin to help complete the deployment. Send this link to an Administrator in the Microsoft 365 tenant (the account must be set up with email), they will receive a link via email which will walk them through the deployment steps.
    2. Magic Link - Use this option if you have administrative access to the Microsoft 365 environment you are deploying to.
      This guide follows the Magic Link option. However, the email invite is much the same process except the user will receive an email containing the link.
  8. Click Copy link next to the Magic Link and paste it into a new tab in your current browser session.
    If you skipped step 1 and did not open a guest browser session, be sure to open the magic link in a guest or incognito/private session.
  9. Upon navigating to the Magic Link, you will be asked to authenticate with an Administrator account in the customer's Microsoft 365 tenant. Enter the username pertaining to that account and click Next. Enter your password and approve any MFA.
    If you weren't already signed into Thread from your browser session, upon clicking on the Magic Link, you may be asked to sign in to Thread before it will redirect to the Microsoft login. You must have admin access in Thread for the next step to work. Note that the email link does not require Thread access.
  10. Permissions will be requested for the bot. Click Accept.
  11. If this step was successful, you should see something similar to the following screen.
  12. Click the Download App link to download the custom Teams app that you are deploying to this customer.
  13. Navigate to the Teams Admin Center (https://admin.teams.microsoft.com) -> Teams apps -> Manage apps.
  14. Click the + Upload new app button.
  15. Click Upload and in the file browser pop-up select the custom teams app .zip file you downloaded in step 12, then click Open.
  16. Now that the zip has been uploaded, you will want to set who in the tenant has access to the app. Navigate to Teams apps -> Setup policies.
  17. Click Global (Org-wide default).
    The Global policy will apply to all users in the environment, but if you want to limit who in your customer's environment can use and interact with the application, you can set up your own policy assignment here.
  18. Under the Installed apps section, click the Add apps button
  19. An Add installed apps sidebar will appear. Search for the app based on the Teams app name you defined when building your custom teams app. Find the app, click Add and Add again at the bottom of the panel.
    To identify the name of your custom app, navigate to the Thread Admin panel (Messenger -> Teams Apps -> Edit -> Teams app name). The Teams app name is what you want to search for.
  20. Under the Pinned apps section, click the + Add apps button.
  21. Search for the app based on the Teams app name you defined when building your custom teams app. Find the app, click Add and Add again at the bottom of the panel.
  22. You should see the app under Pinned apps. If you want the app to feature prominently in your users Teams, you can move it up or down and click Save when done.
  23. Congrats you are all set up with your Teams app in your customer's Microsoft 365 tenant! After a short wait period, they should be ready to start using Messenger!
    It may take time for the app to show up in users' Teams environment, please reboot and/or allow up to 24 hours for the changes you just made to take effect.

How did we do?

Design a custom Teams app for your customers

How to uninstall the Microsoft Teams Thread Service App

Contact