How to install Teams 2.0 in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI

Case

You have a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (VAD) Delivery site and you already have the Teams Classic application offered as hosted app or part your hosted desktop (VDI environment). As per Microsoft product support lifecycle, Teams Classic has been deprecated as of July 2025 and automatically removed from your environment. This removes any Teams functionality, including the Teams meeting add-on inside Microsoft Outlook. The Classic Teams in VDI key dates have been: End of availability: July 1, 2025 and end of support: October 1, 2024.

Reinstalling the old Teams Classic binaries will not reliably restore the Outlook add-in, because Microsoft has actively retired the functionality. Microsoft’s supported path is to deploy the new Teams 2.0 (MSIX-based) with VDI optimizations. You need to restore Teams functionality and the Teams meeting add-on in your Citrix VDI environment. Bear in mind that there are certain limitations of Teams 2.0 in VDI environments, which are described at: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-client-vdi-requirements-deploy. This article provides high-level guidance on how to install Teams 2.0 in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops VDI.

Solution

Pre-requisites

The following items are the pre-requisites to deploy, before configuring the new Teams 2.0 in the Citrix VAD environment.

Uninstall a previous classic Teams version, if such version is still present in your server.
Install the latest Citrix Workspace App client on each of your client machines accessing the Citrix VDI infrastructure.
Install the latest Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (VAD) LTSR or CR supported version in your environment. Choosing the appropriate version is based on your own environment and requirements. Minimum supported version for Teams 2.0 is Citrix VAD LTSR 1912 CU6, but latest CU or other LTSR/CR is highly recommended. This Citrix VAD installation on your Citrix VDA servers can be an in-place upgrade or phased migration.
Install the latest profile management solution version, such as Citrix Profile Management or FsLogix. The minimum FsLogix supported for Teams 2.0 is FSLogix Version 2210 Hotfix 4, but latest FsLogix version is highly recommended, due to new features and bugfixes. To upgrade your existing FsLogix installation, you need to first uninstall the existing FsLogix version, reboot your server, install the new/latest FsLogix version and reboot again. Also you will need to update your Active Directory Policy Definitions folder in the central store with the latest fslogix.admx and fslogix.adml files in the FsLogix installation bundle. Finally, ensure that your Citrix Users AD security group is a member of the FsLogix Include groups (local security groups) on each Citrix VDA.
Prepare your environment for Microsoft appx packages (msix installer), by running the following Powershell cmdlets.

#After running the below verify in regedit at HKEY_LOCALMACHINE_SOFTWARE_POLICIES_MICROSOFT_WINDOWS_APPX

New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Appx -Name AllowAllTrustedApps -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Appx -Name AllowDevelopmentWithoutDevLicense -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Appx -Name BlockNonAdminUserInstall -Value 0 -PropertyType DWORD -Force | Out-Null

Detect if you have the .NET 4.8 version, which is a requirement, by running the following command. If .NET 4.8 is not present, install it in your server.

#.NET must be 4.8
(Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full").Version

Install and configure the new Teams 2.0 for VDI

The New Teams Client is installed either directly via the MSIX package (Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10) or via Teams Bootstrapper Executable (Windows Server 2022 and Windows 11). The method via the Teams Bootstrapper installation is the recommended version on Citrix Worker machines on Windows Server 2022 or later.

#On Windows Server 2019

Dism.exe /Online /Add-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackagePath:C:\Scripts\MSTeams-x64.msix /SkipLicense

#Add extra registry keys to optimize for Citrix

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Citrix\WebSocketService" /v ProcessWhitelist /t REG_Multi_SZ /d msedgewebview2.exe /f | Out-Null
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Teams" /v disableAutoUpdate /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f | Out-Null

#You may also need to configure Teams autostart via GPO or via manual registry tweaks on your server. Strict requirement for autostart to work is to have the user manually launch Teams for the first time inside their Citrix session.

Teams meeting Outlook add-on

#The add-on still needs to be installed and configured so that you can continue to schedule Teams meetings via Microsoft Outlook, same bittiness as the installed Office 365 apps (x64 vs x86).

#For x64 install with following command

msiexec.exe /i "$((Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Program Files\WindowsApps' -Filter 'MSTeams*').FullName)\MicrosoftTeamsMeetingAddinInstaller.msi" Reboot=ReallySuppress ALLUSERS=1 TARGETDIR="C:\Windows\MicrosoftTeamsMeetingAddin" /qn

#After installation, the add-in must be registered by executing the following commands:

$appX64DLL = (Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\Windows\MicrosoftTeamsMeetingAddin\x64" -Include "Microsoft.Teams.AddinLoader.dll" -Recurse).FullName
Start-Process -FilePath "$env:WinDir\SysWOW64\regsvr32.exe" -ArgumentList "/s /n /i:user `"$appX64DLL`"" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

If (!(Test-Path 'HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\')) {New-Item -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\" | Out-Null}
New-Item -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins" -Name "TeamsAddin.FastConnect" -Force -ErrorAction Ignore | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\TeamsAddin.FastConnect" -Type "DWord" -Name "LoadBehavior" -Value 3 -force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\TeamsAddin.FastConnect" -Type "String" -Name "Description" -Value "Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in for Microsoft Office" -force | Out-Null
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\TeamsAddin.FastConnect" -Type "String" -Name "FriendlyName" -Value "Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in for Microsoft Office" -force | Out-Null
If (!(Test-Path 'HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\')) {New-Item -Path "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\" | Out-Null}

#FsLogix inclusions (normally should not be in the inclusion section of the FsLogix redirections.xml file, since everything is included by default. The following paths must be included in the New Teams:

%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweSettingssettings.dat
%LocalAppData%Publishers8wekyb3d8bbweTeamsSharedConfigapp_switcher_settings.json
%LocalAppData%Publishers8wekyb3d8bbweTeamsSharedConfigtma_settings.json
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweAC
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweAppData
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweLocalCache
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweLocalState
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweRoamingState
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweSettings
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweSystemAppData
%LocalAppData%PackagesMSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbweTempState

References

https://www.deyda.net/index.php/en/2024/05/17/install-new-microsoft-teams-version-2-in-citrix/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/microsoftteams/meetings/teams-meeting-add-in-missing

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-client-vdi-requirements-deploy#teams-meeting-add-in

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-client-vdi-requirements-deploy