Microsoft Teams now gives admins greater control over third-party 'apps'

Microsoft Teams is getting extended controls for admins. Microsoft is currently rolling out a new update to Teams that will give admins and IT Pros greater control over other users on Microsoft Teams in terms of what external ‘apps’ they can use. Microsoft refers to bots, tabs, and connectors as ‘apps’ in Teams, which means admins can now effectively control what tabs, bots, or connectors their users can use. These ‘apps’ can be something that comes with a bot, a tab, and a connector or a combination of these three components.

From the Office 365 admin portal, IT Pros can now choose to completely disable use of external apps in Microsoft Teams. They can also choose to turn it on and only allow specific apps to be used by users in Teams. The update also lets admins disable side loading of external apps, which should help keep teams and user data a lot more secure as no one will be able to load an unverified app without the admin’s permission.

Microsoft Teams also now includes an option that lets admins to automatically enable all external apps that get submitted to the Microsoft Teams app catalog. By turning this on, admins are essentially allowing users to use any new app that launches on the Microsoft Team app store — so most admins are probably going to disable this one.

The latest controls are rolling out at the moment, and it will be available to all Microsoft Team users in the next few days,