Overview of Teams Desktop Client Auto Update Process

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Microsoft Teams has revolutionized the communications and the collaboration experience for Office 365 users across the Globe with a suite of all the power-packed collaboration features into one Technology and providing users with a Seamless and most powerful Collaboration tool.

The rich collaboration features of Microsoft Teams can be leveraged by users across various platforms wiz. Desktop, Mobile or Web client. However, owing to integration with the Office applications and Intranet network compatibility for leveraging all the rich collaboration features, majority of the users across an organization prefer the Teams Desktop client for the world class user experience. Microsoft has been investing enormous efforts in roll out of the latest features for enhancing user experience regularly and predominantly across Microsoft Teams Desktop Client version, hence this article would be mostly confided to Teams desktop client auto update process on Windows machines.

Microsoft has been agile in terms of the MS Teams latest features roll out in form of upgraded versions of Teams Desktop client packages on a frequency of every two weeks and usually on a Tuesday.Teams desktop client by virtue is enabled for Auto updates as mentioned in below screen shot and is a seamless process to get the users upgraded to latest version.

On a high level the Teams Desktop client Auto update follows the given process, check for latest updates every few hours behind the scenes, download it when package available, and then waits for the computer to be idle before silently installing the update and provide the user with latest features.

Teams Desktop Client Auto Update Lifecycle.png

Step 1: Check for Updates

Teams desktop client does check for availability of latest version of Teams desktop client by running the below mentioned query from the tool in the context of given installed user account.

https://teams.microsoft.com/desktopclient/update/X.X.X.X/windows/OSBit?ring=general

Here X.X.X.X would be the current version of the Teams Desktop client app.

In case if there is a latest desktop client version available for the given user, there is a web response on the given web query as mentioned below with values.

isUpdateAvailable, nugetPackagePath, releasesPath, url, scenarioCode, deltaPackagePath, deltaReleasesPath

Teams Desktop Client.png

Based on the response Teams Desktop client proceeds with further steps.

In case if the available version of Desktop Client is latest there is no web response on the above web query and no further action is required.

Step 2: Download the latest Package

Based upon the web response in above the latest package of the Teams desktop client is downloaded from the below mention URL across to your local computer location at %localappdata%\Microsoft\Teams\packages. The package is downloaded in the format of NuPKG (NuGet Package) format.

https://statics.teams.microsoft.com/production-windows/Y.Y.Y.Y/Teams-Y.Y.Y.Y-full.nupkg

Here Y.Y.Y.Y is the latest version of the available MS Teams.

Step 3: Latest Package Installation

Teams client Auto update is a pretty seamless process which is predominantly handled on background without any intervention from logged in user and it is usually designed to install the latest available downloaded package as soon as the system is idle.

Few of the scenarios when the Teams Desktop client Auto update process might be blocked even after downloading of the latest package are mentioned as below.

  • In case if the Microsoft Teams has been not installed on Default location, this might prevent completion of Teams Auto update installation process.
  • If a user powers off the computer when finished using Teams, Teams will have no way to run the update process.

Step 4: Installation Completed

Once the installation process has been completed the given Teams Desktop client’s current version is updated to the latest version and the latest features are rolled out across to given user.

Note:

Microsoft deploys an internal algorithm for phased roll out of MS Teams latest versions to avoid any Network choking issues while downloading the packages with low bandwidth client locations. That’s the reason you might find users in different versions.

For manual download of the latest Teams client package available for given user, Users can use web client by navigating to ellipsis and clicking on Download Teams Desktop app. The web download location for Teams executable package would be from the below mentioned URL.

https://statics.teams.cdn.office.net/production-windows-x64/Y.Y.Y.Y/Teams_windows_x64.exe

Bio:
Sanjay Kumar has a decade plus of experience across architecting, operations and maintenance of Microsoft collaboration and cloud Technologies. Currently serving as an Infrastructure Architect with Cognizant Technology Solutions. He has a technical expertise across architecting and administration of SharePoint On-premises, Azure IAAS/PAAS, Microsoft 365 (across Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Teams, Azure AD, Yammer, Power Automate platform and Graph API automation) and has been working for few of the fortune 500 clients.

To write your own blog on a topic of interest as a guest blogger in the Microsoft Teams Community, please submit your idea here: https://aka.ms/TeamsCommunityBlogger

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/overview-of-teams-desktop-client-auto-update-process/ba-p/2922657 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/overview-of-teams-desktop-client-auto-update-process/ba-p/2922657 2021-11-03 18:00:15Z