How to Connect to Microsoft Teams with PowerShell?

Requirement: Connect to Microsoft Teams using PowerShell.

Microsoft Teams is a platform for team collaboration in the workplace, and it can be used for real-time communication, sharing files, managing projects, and more. As Microsoft Teams is a crucial part of the communications strategy in most organizations, the combination of PowerShell provides a powerful way to automate tasks. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to connect to Microsoft Teams using PowerShell. We’ll also see some basic commands you can use once connected. Let’s get started!

Connect to Microsoft Teams using PowerShell

Connecting to Microsoft Teams using PowerShell is simple and straightforward. To connect to Microsoft Teams using PowerShell, you will need to first install the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module. This module can be installed from the PowerShell Gallery by running the following command: Install-Module -Name MicrosoftTeams. Once the module has been installed, you will need to connect to your Microsoft Teams account by running the Connect-MicrosoftTeams cmdlet. This cmdlet will prompt you for your Microsoft Teams credentials, and once you have entered them, you will be connected to your Microsoft Teams account. From there, you can use all of the cmdlets in the MicrosoftTeams module to manage your Microsoft Teams environment.

Step 1: Install Microsoft Teams PowerShell Module

To start with, you need to install the PowerShell module for Microsoft Teams. Check if you have the Teams module installed already by: 

Get-module *teams* 

This gets you the installed Teams modules along with its version.

This gets you the Microsoft Teams PowerShell version.

How do I get the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module? If the Teams module is not installed already, Here is how to install the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module.

1. Open Windows PowerShell with “Run as Administrator”, and Enter

   Install-Module -Name MicrosoftTeams

2. Confirm the prompt by entering “A” Yes to All. The module will start to download and install.

   

How do I update Microsoft Teams PowerShell module?

To upgrade the teams module, run:

Update-Module MicrosoftTeams

Step 2: Connect to Microsoft Teams using PowerShell

Once you have the Teams PowerShell module installed, you can connect to Teams using 

Connect-MicrosoftTeams

You’ll get a popup to enter your credentials. This Popup is multi-factor authentication (MFA) aware! You can connect Microsoft Teams PowerShell with MFA by leaving the “-Credential” parameter.

You can also use the credential parameter to get the username and password to connect.

#Connect to Microsoft Teams
Connect-MicrosoftTeams -Credential (Get-Credential)

Can I connect to Microsoft Teams with a hard-coded user name and password through PowerShell? Sure! Here is the PowerShell script to connect with the username and password in the script.

#Import the Microsoft Teams module
Import-Module -Name MicrosoftTeams

#Parameters for Credentials
$UserName = "Salaudeen@crescent.com"
$PassWord = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "Password goes here" -AsPlainText -Force

#Create a Credential object
$Cred = New-Object -TypeName "System.Management.Automation.PSCredential" -ArgumentList $UserName, $PassWord

#Connect to Microsoft Teams with given user name and password
Connect-MicrosoftTeams -Credential $Cred

#Get All Public Teams
Get-Team | Where {$_.Visibility -eq "Public"}

Make sure you have either global administrator or Teams service administrator rights before connecting to teams. Although any team owner/member can connect to Teams with PowerShell, their permissions are limited within the teams.

Step 3: Start using Cmdlets for Microsoft Teams

Once you have established the connectivity with Microsoft Teams, you can start using PowerShell cmdlets. E.g., Let’s get a list of Microsoft Teams using PowerShell.

#Connect to Microsoft Teams
Connect-MicrosoftTeams -Credential (Get-Credential)

#Get all Teams
Get-Team

Disconnect Microsoft Teams from PowerShell

To disconnect the Microsoft Teams environment from PowerShell, run the cmdlet:

Disconnect-MicrosoftTeams

Get All PowerShell Cmdlets available in Teams Module

To get all available cmdlets for Teams, you can use the PowerShell command:

Get-Command -Module MicrosoftTeams

How to uninstall Microsoft Teams PowerShell?

For some reason, If you want to uninstall the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module, use:

UnInstall-Module MicrosoftTeams

Conclusion

Although the Microsoft 365 admin center can be used to administer various Microsoft 365 services like Azure AD, Teams, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online, PowerShell provides more flexibility and additional capabilities that help Admins to save a lot of time and effort. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you should now be able to connect to Microsoft Teams and use the available cmdlets to manage teams and channels, retrieve user and team information, and perform other tasks. This can help you to improve the management of Microsoft Teams in your organization, as well as automate routine tasks, and gather insights on the usage of Microsoft Team.

You can automate a lot many tasks in your Microsoft Teams. Here is my related post on managing Microsoft Teams using PowerShell: How to Manage Microsoft Teams using PowerShell?