Microsoft Teams — Deployment

How to bulk deploy the Teams desktop client across your organisation

Rather than asking every user to install Teams manually, you can push it silently to all machines using a single lightweight installer called TeamsBootstrapper. Here is what you need in place before you run it, how to choose your install method, and how to deploy it across your whole organisation.

Prerequisites for target computers

Every machine you are deploying to must meet these requirements before you run the installer. Missing any of them can cause a silent failure or a broken Teams installation.

  • Use the latest version of teamsbootstrapper.exe Microsoft updates the bootstrapper to fix known issues. Always download a fresh copy before deploying. If you already have the file, right-click it and check Properties then Details then Product version to compare it against the latest download.
  • Microsoft 365 Apps or Office LTSC 2021 Teams requires one of these Office versions to interoperate correctly with other Microsoft apps on the machine. Older standalone Office versions are not supported.
  • WebView2 Runtime at the latest version Teams uses WebView2 to render its interface. If it is missing or outdated, the sign-in window may load blank and other UI elements may not display correctly. Update it before deploying Teams.
  • Delivery Optimization enabled (Download Mode is not set to Bypass) Teams uses Windows Delivery Optimization for automatic updates after installation. If your Delivery Optimization policy is set to Download Mode 100 (Bypass), Teams updates will not work. Any other mode is fine.
  • Notification banners enabled for Teams Teams notifications will not appear unless the setting is turned on. Go to System then Notifications then Microsoft Teams and make sure Show Notification Banners is on. This can be pushed via policy before deployment.
Any previously installed Teams version will be replaced. When teamsbootstrapper.exe runs on a machine where a different version of Teams is already installed, it replaces that version with the provisioned one. Plan for this if you are deploying to machines where users have installed Teams themselves outside your managed process.

Single machine: online or offline installer?

For deploying to a single computer, you have two options. The online installer is the simpler path. The offline installer makes sense when you want to minimise the amount of bandwidth used during the initial install, for example on a slow link or when sealing a VDI base image.

B
Offline installer (local MSIX)

Download both the bootstrapper and the Teams MSIX package separately. Pass the MSIX path to the bootstrapper using the -o flag. The bootstrapper installs from the local file instead of downloading from Microsoft.

Download the MSIX for your architecture: x64, x86, or ARM64.

Local path
.\teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o "C:\path\to\MSTeams-x64.msix"
UNC path
.\teamsbootstrapper.exe -p -o "\\server\share\MSTeams-x64.msix"

Use the full absolute path, not a relative path with a dot. A relative path is one of the most common causes of error 0x80070057.


Deploying to your whole organisation

For a full organisation rollout, you distribute teamsbootstrapper.exe to your target machines using your existing software deployment tool and run it there. The command is the same as the single-machine install. The distribution step is the only difference.

1
Download the latest teamsbootstrapper.exe
Get the file from Microsoft directly: download the installer. If you already have it, check Properties then Details then Product version before deploying. An outdated bootstrapper can fail silently on machines where known bugs have since been fixed.
2
Distribute it to your target machines
Use whichever deployment tool you already have in place. Microsoft supports Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM), Group Policy software distribution, and third-party tools such as PDQ Deploy. The bootstrapper is a single executable with no additional installer package required.
3
Run the installer on each computer as an administrator
Your deployment tool should execute .\teamsbootstrapper.exe -p in an elevated context. The bootstrapper installs Teams for all current users on the machine and for any users added to it afterwards.
4
Confirm success or failure from the command output
The bootstrapper writes a clear success or failure message to the command line. Most deployment tools capture this output in a log. Check it after the run completes. If a machine returns an HRESULT error code, look it up in Microsoft's HRESULT reference to understand the cause before retrying.

Government cloud tenants: set the cloud endpoint before deploying

If your tenant is on GCC, GCC High, DoD, or Gallatin (21Vianet), you need to configure a registry key on Windows or a plist key on Mac before Teams first launches. This tells Teams which cloud endpoint to connect to before sign-in. Without it, Teams may try to reach the wrong endpoint and fail silently during authentication.

Cloud environment Value
Commercial1
GCC2
GCC High (GCCH)3
DoD4
Gallatin (21Vianet)7

Set the registry value on Windows machines before running teamsbootstrapper.exe:

Registry key (Windows)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Teams Name : CloudType Type : DWORD Value : 3 # Replace 3 with the value matching your cloud environment

For Mac, set the equivalent plist key. This can be pushed to managed devices via Intune:

plist key (Mac)
Domain : com.microsoft.teams2 Key : CloudType Data Type : Int Value : 3 # Replace 3 with the value matching your cloud environment
Commercial tenants do not need this step. The registry and plist keys are only required for government and sovereign cloud environments. If your tenant is standard commercial (worldwide), skip this section entirely.

Microsoft reference: learn.microsoft.com — Bulk deploy the Microsoft Teams desktop client

Need help rolling this out via Intune or SCCM? We can put together the deployment package, set the correct prerequisites, and make sure Teams lands cleanly on every machine in your tenant.
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