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Written: 26/01/2020 | Updated: N/A
Developer Preview is a public program for developers which provides early access to unreleased features in Microsoft Teams, allowing the Team to explore and test upcoming features for inclusion in their Teams app. Being able to test their app well in advance of new features released into general availability (GA) is essential for the team – for the smooth continuous running of the app within the organisation, but also where the organisation is selling and supporting a custom application across multiple customer tenants. There are several benefits of the developer preview including being able to liaise directly with Microsoft Teams Developer Support and being able to escalate bugs via Support and GitHub.
Whilst developer preview does provide early access to unreleased features, it is not recommended for many users who can, subject to app permission policies, turn it on. As Microsoft notes clearly within it’s documentation features included in the preview may not be complete, may undergo changes before becoming available in the public release and may be buggy. They are provided for testing and exploration purposes only and are excluded from the Service Level Agreement (SLA). In other words, organisations may wish, if they do not use custom apps, to turn the ability off and prevent users from being able to turn on developer preview in their Teams clients.
Features available in the public developer preview are available here
WHY WOULD WE DO IT?
- To be able to test upcoming features for inclusion in the Teams app
- For the smooth continuous running of the app
- To support the app across multiple customer tenants
PREREQUISITES
Users need Teams licences – usually via Office/Microsoft 365. Teams Administrator or Global Administrator permissions are required to set org wide app settings in the Teams Admin Centre
HOW
1.) Login into the Microsoft 365 Admin portal at https://login.microsoftonline.com
2.) Select Admin
3.) Select Teams from Admin Centres in the left navigation
4.) Select Teams Apps, then Permission Policies then Org Wide App Settings
5.) Ensure Allow Interaction with Custom Apps under Custom Apps is set to on. Select Save
6.) Once Custom Apps are enabled, the Teams desktop Client will need to be restarted . Once restarted, select the Menu then about
7.) Select Developer Preview
8.) Select Switch to Developer Preview
9.) Teams will restart and the user will be required to log back in
10.) To enable developer preview on the Teams mobile client, select the Menu icon
11.) Select Settings
12.) Select About
13.) Toggle Developer Preview to on
14.) Select Switch which will make the app close and restart
Our job here is done
Developer preview is turned on for the Desktop, Web and Mobile clients
HOW TO DISABLE DEVELOPER PREVIEW
Removing from the Desktop and web clients is a simple case of going to the Menu and selecting about and unchecking the developer preview which will trigger a restart
Removing from the Mobile client is going to the Menu, selecting Settings then About and then swiping Developer Preview to off which will trigger a restart
Disability the ability for the organisation to be able to enable Developer Preview is to return to Org Wide App settings within Permission Policies of Teams Apps in the Teams Admin Centre, swiping off Allow interaction with custom apps and Saving. This will remove the Developer preview option from all users desktop, web and mobile clients.
