Automatically set "Register Teams as the chat app for Office"

[Tyler Bristow]

We are slowly moving over to Microsoft Teams. We are in the process of setting up a new location and would like to start all these new users with only Teams installed and not even give them the option to use Skype for Business. As part of this, we will be imaging new computers for them and I would like to automatically check the box in Teams that says, "Register Teams as the chat app for Office (requires restarting Office applications)". Is there a way for me to do that? 

On this site https://www.msoutlook.info/question/setting-skype-or-other-im-client-to-integrate-with-outlook they suggest changing the IM Provider to Teams, which I did, but that doesn't work. I have also tried adjusting the other keys in there such as UpAndRunning, but I can't get it to work by changing these keys alone. Any suggestions?

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Have you set everyone to teams only?

Adam

[#3]

Adam is right here. Setting your users to Teams Only mode should default Teams to register as the default app.

[#4]

Is it possible to move only a few users to Teams Only mode? We are not ready to move everyone to Teams yet.

[#5]

Sure this is possible! You can do this via UI in the teams admin center och via powershell:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/skype/grant-csteamsupgradepolicy?view=skype-ps

Adam

[#6]

From my recent testing of trying to figure out all this coexistence stuff because so many people seem to have issues, I've recently found out that Skype Only mode for the org is broken. I was successful in setting up entire mesh coexistence, by setting my default Org to Teams only and users to Skype Only. This allowed me to, even on existing chats which usually would black hole, to now work and automatically direct me to their Skype for Business with chats doing it this way.

Any other combination seems to cause issues. Teams Only org setting and a user in Skype Only mode also removes the chat tab for that user in Teams preventing them from stating Teams chat.

One big issues with Teams coexistence that I've discovered as well is you lose the ability to do group chats when going cross product. Everyone has to be in Teams to do a group chat, Skype can also initiate group chat with Teams users however it will just start a meeting and tell the Teams user to click the link to join the skype meeting.

So some things to note there. It is possible, I'm still doing testing on this, but right now, the only working way for true coexistence is set users to Skype Only manually, and change your org setting to Teams only and you'll get Coexistence. At least a cut over style coexistence. Islands can still be used only in the case you intend to run both at the same Time, but this opens up for missed chats, and a whole host of other things if your users aren't ready and check Teams frequently or both places. If you want to do it in batches and they use one or the other then right now this seems to be the way to go. 

[#7]

Chris, that may be your experience, but it isn't necessarily the same for everyone. What did support say when you found a combination that didn't work as you expected?

[#8]

Any other combination seems to cause issues. Teams Only org setting and a user in Skype Only mode also removes the chat tab for that user in Teams preventing them from stating Teams chat. 

That is correct, if you are Skype Only then the Chat tab in Teams should disappear, last time I checked it was still necessary to do this yourself via a messaging policy. It is intended that setting to Skype with Teams Collab mode would enforce it automatically, maybe you are seeing that.

One big issues with Teams coexistence that I've discovered as well is you lose the ability to do group chats when going cross product. Everyone has to be in Teams to do a group chat, Skype can also initiate group chat with Teams users however it will just start a meeting and tell the Teams user to click the link to join the skype meeting. 

This is also as expected, Skype - Teams interop only allows 1:1 simple text chat and voice and video calling, for anything else it escalates to a Skype meeting. For example there's no screen sharing.

The point is that you are in a temporary mode while you complete your transformation, it's not intended to be a long term position. Just like an exchange hybrid migration is allows some ongoing communication to happen but you need to all be on the same platform or more extensive capabilities and new functionality.

[#9]

Yeah, def. seeing the way it should be working, but it only seems to activate when your org settings is Teams Only.

Agree with everything you are saying, def. only transition. I was just pointing out I've seen so many folks having issues with the whole, I've been on islands, now my messages black hole, and wanted to find a way around that and been trying everything and the way that got it finally to activate as one would expect was using Teams Only org mode.

Obviously Islands, is islands and would do nothing, but for whatever reason setting Skype for Business Only as your org setting and using Teams only individual user upgrade modes seems to not work as you would expect yet. Something in that Teams Only as the Org setting seems to do something different when it comes to how the Teams client behaves when trying to contact Skype Only users.

But anyway, in the Teams Only mode, setting users to Skype Only is def. removing chat tab now, so maybe an update got pushed recently lighting these up proper.

[#10]

Hello @Chris Webb 

Once a user is upgraded to Teams, he will be prompted to complete the setup process.
During this setup process this option is automatically setup and should remain like this because TeamsOnly means you've only Teams as the IM provider for Office.
Once Teams Only is enabled, there are some registry keys that are setup, for example who is your IM Provider .

• If you have  Office 2016 C2R you should have some information regarding Teams.exe under: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\REGISTRY\MACHINE\Software\IM Providers\Teams] 
• If you use MSI, then the path is :[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IM Providers\Teams]