- Suddenly Firefox is now blocking MS Teams, all the other Office365 apps are OK including SharePoint, OneNote and OneDrive but Teams is blocked - why and can I fix it? Chosen solution Make sure you are not blocking content.
- Microsoft Teams is a messaging app for teams where all conversations, meetings, files, and notes can be accessed by everyone, all in one place. It’s a place for collaboration and work to happen in.
Microsoft Teams is a digital hub that brings conversations, meetings, files, and apps together in one place. Because it’s built on Office 365, schools benefit from integration with their familiar Office apps and services. It delivers enterprise-grade security and compliance that is extensible and customizable to fit the needs of every school.
A fix would be for Firefox to spoof its own user-agent string, so it represents itself as whatever the latest version of Edge is. The functionality works, but Microsoft is blocking it through user-agent sniffing. Same applies to Skype. Firefox could spoof the user-agent when any Microsoft site is visited (based on a list of primary domains. The Microsoft Teams desktop client is a standalone application and is also available in Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise.Teams is available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows (8.1 or later), ARM64 for Windows 10 on ARM, and Windows Server (2012 R2 or later), as well as for macOS and Linux (in.deb and.rpm formats). Microsoft Teams currently supports Internet Explorer 11, Microsoft Edge, RS2 or later, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari 11.1+. There’s though a problem centering around Microsoft Teams browser versions that are not supported. Teams fully supports these Internet browsers on paper, with exceptions for calling and meetings. In reality, the browsers.
With Microsoft Teams, your school or institution can create collaborative classrooms, connect in professional learning communities, communicate with school staff, coordinate research across institutions, or more easily facilitate student life efforts like clubs or extracurricular activities – all from a single experience in Office 365 for Education.
Microsoft Teams saves time, deepens connections and simplifies everyday logistics. This allows staff to focus on their roles as educators, researchers, and leaders in your school or institution. Students benefit from easy-to-access online classrooms, recorded lessons, and one-on-one meetings with teachers.
This guide is for IT admins in education, including those who haven't yet deployed Teams. This guide will help you get started with:
- Enabling Teams for students
- Learning what kind of controls are available to manage Teams within your school
- Finding partner services through references to external documentation
This guide is designed to get you started quickly with configuration recommendations specific to Teams in schools. It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but it is a good starting point.
If you've already deployed Teams (as a pilot or full deployment) and are looking for pointers on how to use Teams, see Microsoft Teams for Education.
Before you begin
- Deploy School Data Sync to make it easier for educators to automatically create Teams. Contact https://aka.ms/sdssupport for deployment assistance.
- Configure the correct ports and protocols for Teams. See Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges.
- Prepare your school's network for Teams.
- Choose a team type. Teams for Education offers three new types of teams (for a total of four). To understand the differences and use cases of each, see Choose a team type to collaborate in Teams.
Quick start - Teams planning guide
Step 1: Get your people together
Assemble a group of individuals from staff, educators, and the educator community to act as the stakeholder & decision-making group for your Teams deployment.
Step 2: Prioritize your scenarios
Collaboration and communication are about people! Pick the most relevant scenarios for your organization instead of talking about features and functions. Check out the Microsoft 365 FastTrack Productivity Library for examples to help you define scenarios for your school. Successful Teams deployments often center around highly collaborative teams that work closely together, such as classrooms, professional learning communities, and extracurricular student groups.
🏆 Best practice:
Plan Teams with Teams! Customers who use Teams to plan their deployment ease the change curve for key stakeholders. Consider creating a team called Microsoft 365 Deployment and creating channels for the various workloads you want to deploy. Your team might look something like this:
Step 3: Conduct pilots and deploy Teams
You’ll want to conduct an initial Teams pilot with your educators, both champions and early adopters, for one or more of the scenarios you selected above. A pilot gives you valuable information about how Office 365 and Teams are received in your organization. Select an interested group of users and a prioritized business scenario to get started.
Once your pilots are complete, you’ll have the feedback you need to plan your broad Teams deployment. Be sure your deployment plan integrates your prioritized scenarios to ensure your school is getting the most from Office 365 and Teams.
Step 4: Measure usage, manage satisfaction, and drive adoption
To successfully drive adoption of Office 365 and Teams, stay focused on your educator’s experience. Here’s a quick checklist of our best practices to get you started.
- Read the Office 365 Adoption Guidance for best practices. Also available to you is our supplemental content for creating a change management strategy for Microsoft Teams to document your approach.
- Study Office 365 activity reports to understand usage across your school. If you aren’t an Office 365 admin, ask your admin to give you Reports Reader permissions so you can access activity reports.
- Capture feedback from your educators on their experience with Office 365 and Teams. Use a channel in Teams when your school has fewer than 5000 individuals. Use a public group in Yammer when your school is larger than this current membership limit in Teams.
- Nurture your champions and highlight your wins. Reward educators for embracing these new tools and using them in innovative ways. This, above anything, ensures continued adoption of Office 365 and Teams.
Turn on or off Microsoft Teams Licenses
Teams is a cloud-based service. Once an educator or student has a valid license and Teams has been enabled, they can run the desktop, web, and mobile Teams clients. They can install these clients themselves -- the IT admin doesn't need to deploy these clients. You can manage individual user licenses for Microsoft Teams by using the Microsoft 365 Admin Center or by using PowerShell. See Office 365 licensing for Teams for information about both methods . This is valuable to understand if you are interested in piloting Teams before broad enablement.
Configure Teams for your school
Important
Starting June 2019, all Teams for Education admins should use the Microsoft Teams admin center to manage all their Teams policies. Teams for Education policies can no longer be managed in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. For more information, see Manage Teams during the transition to the new Microsoft Teams admin center.
You can easily manage all Teams policies in the Microsoft Teams admin center by signing in with your admin credentials.
Important
You can run the Teams for Education Policy Wizard to easily apply policies for your students, educators and staff. The tool adjusts the Global (Org-wide default) policy definition of a core set of policies with settings that we recommend for student safety and applies it to students. The tool also creates and assigns a set of custom policies to educators and staff. If you already used the wizard to apply policies for your students, educators and staff, use this article as a reference or only if you want to manually create and manage policies for your students, educators and staff.
Settings in the Microsoft Teams admin center are not managed based on user license type. Instead, we suggest that you define different policies to manage which capabilities are available to your users. To configure a policy, click the policy in the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center. Here's an example of messaging policies.
With policies, you can turn on and turn off features at the per-user level. Here’s how policy assignments work:
By default, every new user will get the Global policy (tenant-level settings).
A user can be assigned a pre-canned user policy created by Microsoft if it meets your requirements. These pre-canned policies are not editable by admins. If you want to manage these in the future, create new custom policies and assign the custom policies to users.
A custom policy can be assigned to any user. To create a new custom policy, click Add, choose the settings you want for the policy, and click Save. Then assign the custom policy to a user by going to Users in the Microsoft Teams admin center or by using a script.
How to enable different policies for faculty and students
To have custom settings for faculty and students (for example, Chat is enabled for faculty but not for students), there are two methods to create and assign them:
- Use the PowerShell module to run a script to create and assign multiple policies. See the Appendix for script examples and documentation.
- In the Microsoft Teams admin center, create a new custom policy and assign the policy to users on the Users tab.
Note
Until a custom policy is assigned to a user, the user will be using the Global policy setting. This means that if Chat is enabled in the Global policy and disabled in the custom Student policy, until the custom policy is assigned to the student, the student can use Chat. In this case, it may be easier to disable Chat globally and use custom policies to enable Chat for faculty.
Use policies and settings to enforce student safety measures
To maintain student safety, you should use administrative policies to control who can use private chat and private calling, who can schedule meetings, and what content types can be shared.
View Keeping students safe while using Teams for distance learning for more details on what policies and setting updates you need to make within your environment to keep it safe for students.
Appendix
How to create and assign a messaging policy
- See whether any of the available policies in your tenants suit your requirements by running Get-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy.
- If not, create a new policy by running New-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy -Identity <policy name> -<parameter name> -<parameter value>.
For more information, see Set-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy
Sample script
See PowerShell script sample - Create and assign a messaging policy.
Distribute to clients
Teams has clients available for web, desktop (Windows, Mac, and Linux), and mobile (Android and iOS). These clients all require an active internet connection and do not support an offline mode. To get the latest details on the functionality and methods of distribution of each of these clients, check out our topic to Get clients for Teams.
The setup file for the Teams client is an executable file that can be downloaded by admins and end users from the Teams downloads page. Educators and students on desktops can install the application if they have the appropriate privileges. IT Admins can also distribute the installer and through their existing client distribution tools.
End users with mobile devices can download the Microsoft Teams app from the mobile platform’s app store.
Operating system requirements
| Windows | macOS | Linux | iOS | Android |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 and later | 10.10 and later | DEB or RPM | 10 or later | 4.4 and later |
Internet browser support
Teams fully supports the following Internet browsers, with noted exceptions for calling and meetings. This table applies to operating systems running on desktop computers.
| Browser | Calling - audio, video, and sharing | Meetings - audio, video, and sharing123 |
|---|---|---|
| Internet Explorer 11 | Not supported | Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on IE11 without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) Microsoft 365 apps and services will not support Internet Explorer 11 starting August 17, 2021 (Microsoft Teams will not support Internet Explorer 11 earlier, starting November 30, 2020). Learn more. Please note that Internet Explorer 11 will remain a supported browser. Internet Explorer 11 is a component of the Windows operating system and follows the Lifecycle Policy for the product on which it is installed. |
| Microsoft Edge, RS2 or later | Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing4 | Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing |
| Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), the latest version plus two previous versions | Fully supported | Fully supported |
| Google Chrome, the latest version plus two previous versions | Fully supported | Fully supported Sharing is supported without any plug-ins or extensions on Chrome version 72 or later. |
| Safari 14+ | 1:1 calls not supported. Group calls fully supported. Video: Fully supported Sharing: Fully supported | Meetings: Fully supported Video: Fully supported Sharing: Fully supported |
| Safari 13.1+ | 1:1 calls not supported. Group calls supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Fully supported | Meetings are supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Fully supported |
| Firefox, the latest version plus two previous versions | Not supported | Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Firefox without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) |
| Safari versions before 13 | Not supported | Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Safari without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) Safari is enabled on versions higher than 11.1 in preview. While in preview, there are known issues with Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention. |
1 To give and take control of shared content during sharing, both parties must be using the Teams desktop client. Control isn't supported when either party is running Teams in a browser. This is due to a technical limitation that we're planning to fix.
2 Blur my background isn't available when you run Teams in a browser. This feature is only available in the Teams desktop client.
3 Teams meetings on browsers are limited to a single incoming video feed of active speaker.
4 Edge RS2 or later doesn't support sending real-time audio and video traffic through HTTP proxies.
Note
As long as an operating system can run the supported browser, Teams is supported on desktop computers. For example, running Firefox on the Linux operating system is an option for using Teams.
For mobile operating systems, we recommend that you run the Teams app, available from the Android and iOS stores. Running Teams in a mobile operating system is supported, but many features are unavailable.
Resources, feedback, and support
Have an issue with this section? If so, please give us some feedback so we can improve this section.
Firefox Microsoft Teams
-->Microsoft Teams has clients available for desktop (Windows, Mac, and Linux), web, and mobile (Android and iOS). These clients all require an active internet connection and do not support an offline mode.
Note
For details about each clients' capabilities on different platforms, see Teams features by platform.
Effective November 29, 2018, you'll no longer be able to use the Microsoft Teams for Windows 10 S (Preview) app, available from the Microsoft Store. Instead, you can now download and install the Teams desktop client on devices running Windows 10 S mode. To download the desktop client, go to https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads. MSI builds of the Teams desktop client are not yet available for devices running Windows 10 S mode.
For more information about Windows 10 S mode, see Introducing Windows 10 in S mode.
Desktop client
Tip
Watch the following session to learn about the benefits of the Windows Desktop Client, how to plan for it, and how to deploy it: Teams Windows Desktop Client
The Microsoft Teams desktop client is a standalone application and is also available in Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. Teams is available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows (8.1 or later), ARM64 for Windows 10 on ARM, and Windows Server (2012 R2 or later), as well as for macOS and Linux (in .deb and .rpm formats). On Windows, Teams requires .NET Framework 4.5 or later; the Teams installer will offer to install it for you if you don't have it. On Linux, package managers such as apt and yum will try to install any requirements for you. However, if they don't then you will need to install any reported requirements before installing Teams on Linux.
The desktop clients provide real-time communications support (audio, video, and content sharing) for team meetings, group calling, and private one-on-one calls.
Desktop clients can be downloaded and installed by end users directly from https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads if they have the appropriate local permissions (admin rights are not required to install the Teams client on a PC but are required on a Mac).
Note
For more details about installing Teams on a Chromebook, please see How to install and run Microsoft Office on a Chromebook.
IT admins can choose their preferred method to distribute the installation files to computers in their organization. Some examples include Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (Windows) or Jamf Pro (macOS). To get the MSI package for Windows distribution, see Install Microsoft Teams using MSI.
Note
Distribution of the client via these mechanisms is only for the initial installation of Microsoft Team clients and not for future updates.
Windows
The Microsoft Teams installation for Windows provides downloadable installers in 32-bit and 64-bit architecture.
Note
The architecture (32-bit vs. 64-bit) of Microsoft Teams is agnostic to the architecture of Windows and Office that is installed.
Microsoft Teams Safari
The Windows client is deployed to the AppData folder located in the user’s profile. Deploying to the user’s local profile allows the client to be installed without requiring elevated rights. The Windows client leverages the following locations:
%LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeams
%LocalAppData%MicrosoftTeamsMeetingAddin
%AppData%MicrosoftTeams
%LocalAppData%SquirrelTemp
When users initiate a call using the Microsoft Teams client for the first time, they might notice a warning with the Windows firewall settings that asks for users to allow communication. Users might be instructed to ignore this message because the call will work, even when the warning is dismissed.
Note
Windows Firewall configuration will be altered even when the prompt is dismissed by selecting “Cancel”. Two inbound rules for teams.exe will be created with Allow action for both TCP and UDP protocols.
If you want to prevent Teams from prompting users to create firewall rules when the users make their first call from Teams, use the Sample PowerShell script - inbound firewall rule below.
Mac
Mac users can install Teams by using a PKG installation file for macOS computers. Administrative access is required to install the Mac client. The macOS client is installed to the /Applications folder.
Install Teams by using the PKG file
- From the Teams download page, under Mac, click Download.
- Double click the PKG file.
- Follow the installation wizard to complete the installation.
- Teams will be installed to /Applications folder. It is a machine-wide installation.
Note
During the installation, the PKG will prompt for admin credentials. The user needs to enter the admin credentials, regardless of whether or not the user is an admin.
If a user currently has a DMG installation of Teams and wants to replace it with the PKG installation, the user should:
- Exit the Teams app.
- Uninstall the Teams app.
- Install the PKG file.
Microsoft Teams For Firefox
IT admins can use managed deployment of Teams to distribute the installation files to all Macs in their organization, such as Jamf Pro.
Note
If you experience issues installing the PKG, let us know. In the Feedback section at the end of this article, click Product feedback.
Linux
Users will be able to install native Linux packages in .deb and .rpm formats. Installing the DEB or RPM package will automatically install the package repository.
- DEB
https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams stable main - RPM
https://packages.microsoft.com/yumrepos/ms-teams
The signing key to enable auto-updating using the system's package manager is installed automatically. However, it can also be found at: https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc. Microsoft Teams ships monthly and if the repository was installed correctly, then your system package manager should handle auto-updating in the same way as other packages on the system.
Note
If you find a bug, submit it using Report a Problem from within the client. For known issues, see Support Teams in your organization.For Teams for Linux support you can use the Linux forum support channel on Microsoft Q&A. Be sure to use the teams-linux tag when posting questions.
Install Teams using DEB package
- Download the package from https://aka.ms/getteams.
- Install using one of the following:
- Open the relevant package management tool and go through the self-guided Linux app installation process.
- Or if you love Terminal, type:
sudo dpkg -i **teams download file**
You can launch Teams via Activities or via Terminal by typing teams.
Install Teams using RPM package
- Download the package from https://aka.ms/getteams.
- Install using one of the following:
- Open the relevant package management tool and go through the self-guided Linux app installation process.
- Or if you love Terminal, type:
sudo yum install **teams download file**
You can launch Teams via Activities or via Terminal by typing teams.
Install manually from the command line
Install manually on Debian and Ubuntu distributions:
Install manually on RHEL, Fedora and CentOS based distributions:
Alternatively, to use yum instead of dnf:
Install manually on openSUSE based distributions:
Web client
The web client (https://teams.microsoft.com) is a full, functional client that can be used from a variety of browsers. The web client supports Calling and Meetings by using webRTC, so there is no plug-in or download required to run Teams in a web browser. The browser must be configured to allow third-party cookies.
Teams fully supports the following Internet browsers, with noted exceptions for calling and meetings. This table applies to operating systems running on desktop computers.
| Browser | Calling - audio, video, and sharing | Meetings - audio, video, and sharing123 |
|---|---|---|
| Internet Explorer 11 | Not supported | Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on IE11 without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) Microsoft 365 apps and services will not support Internet Explorer 11 starting August 17, 2021 (Microsoft Teams will not support Internet Explorer 11 earlier, starting November 30, 2020). Learn more. Please note that Internet Explorer 11 will remain a supported browser. Internet Explorer 11 is a component of the Windows operating system and follows the Lifecycle Policy for the product on which it is installed. |
| Microsoft Edge, RS2 or later | Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing4 | Fully supported, except no outgoing sharing |
| Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based), the latest version plus two previous versions | Fully supported | Fully supported |
| Google Chrome, the latest version plus two previous versions | Fully supported | Fully supported Sharing is supported without any plug-ins or extensions on Chrome version 72 or later. |
| Safari 14+ | 1:1 calls not supported. Group calls fully supported. Video: Fully supported Sharing: Fully supported | Meetings: Fully supported Video: Fully supported Sharing: Fully supported |
| Safari 13.1+ | 1:1 calls not supported. Group calls supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Fully supported | Meetings are supported with full audio support. Video: Incoming only Sharing: Fully supported |
| Firefox, the latest version plus two previous versions | Not supported | Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Firefox without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) |
| Safari versions before 13 | Not supported | Meetings are supported only if the meeting includes PSTN coordinates. To attend a meeting on Safari without PSTN coordinates, users must download the Teams desktop client. Video: Not supported Sharing: Incoming sharing only (no outgoing) Safari is enabled on versions higher than 11.1 in preview. While in preview, there are known issues with Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention. |
1 To give and take control of shared content during sharing, both parties must be using the Teams desktop client. Control isn't supported when either party is running Teams in a browser. This is due to a technical limitation that we're planning to fix.
2 Blur my background isn't available when you run Teams in a browser. This feature is only available in the Teams desktop client.
3 Teams meetings on browsers are limited to a single incoming video feed of active speaker.
4 Edge RS2 or later doesn't support sending real-time audio and video traffic through HTTP proxies.
Note
As long as an operating system can run the supported browser, Teams is supported on desktop computers. For example, running Firefox on the Linux operating system is an option for using Teams.
For mobile operating systems, we recommend that you run the Teams app, available from the Android and iOS stores. Running Teams in a mobile operating system is supported, but many features are unavailable.
The web client performs browser version detection upon connecting to https://teams.microsoft.com. If an unsupported browser version is detected, it will block access to the web interface and recommend that the user download the desktop client or mobile app.
Mobile clients
The Microsoft Teams mobile apps are available for Android and iOS, and are geared for on-the-go users participating in chat-based conversations and allow peer-to-peer audio calls. For mobile apps, go to the relevant mobile stores Google Play and the Apple App Store. The Windows Phone App was retired July 20, 2018 and may no longer work.
In China, here's how to get Teams for Android.
Supported mobile platforms for Microsoft Teams mobile apps are the following:
Android: Support is limited to the last four major versions of Android. When a new major version of Android is released, the new version and the previous three versions are officially supported.
iOS: Support is limited to the two most recent major versions of iOS. When a new major version of iOS is released, the new version of iOS and the previous version are officially supported.
Note
The mobile version must be available to the public in order for Teams to work as expected.
Mobile apps are distributed and updated through the respective mobile platform’s app store only. Distribution of the mobile apps via MDM or side-loading is not supported by Microsoft. Once the mobile app has been installed on a supported mobile platform, the Teams Mobile App itself will be supported provided the version is within three months of the current release.
| Decision Point | Are there any restrictions preventing users from installing the appropriate Microsoft Teams client on their devices? |
| Next Steps | If your organization restricts software installation, make sure that process is compatible with Microsoft Teams. Note: Admin rights are not required for PC client installation but are required for installation on a Mac. |
Client update management
Clients are currently updated automatically by the Microsoft Teams service with no IT administrator intervention required. If an update is available, the client will automatically download the update and when the app has idled for a period of time, the update process will begin.
Client-side configurations
Currently, there are no supported options available to configure the client either through the tenant admin, PowerShell, Group Policy Objects or the registry.
Notification settings
There are currently no options available for IT administrators to configure client-side notification settings. All notification options are set by the user. The figure below outlines the default client settings.
Sample PowerShell script - inbound firewall rule
This sample script, which needs to run on client computers in the context of an elevated administrator account, will create a new inbound firewall rule for each user folder found in c:users. When Teams finds this rule, it will prevent the Teams application from prompting users to create firewall rules when the users make their first call from Teams.