I have, many times, been asked why certain apps cannot be displayed or used in Microsoft Teams. Most of the time, this has to do with someone having developed an App in Power Apps and thinking that they just need to add it as a link in Microsoft Teams so that it will appear in Teams’ left menu. But it’s not.

Things are not always what they seem

A Power App is a Power App and if you want it to be able to be added as a Teams app in the left menu in Microsoft Teams, you must first package it as a Teams app. How to do that is described in the article “Create Teams app package” on Microsoft Learn.

Packed and ready. What to do now?

When the App is packaged and you have the “App package”, you need to send this package to someone who is the Teams Administrator in your company. The Teams Administrator then needs to do the following.

1. Upload the package/app to Teams

• Go to the Microsoft Teams Admin Center (TAC)
• Under Teams Apps click on “Manage Apps”
• Select “Upload new app” and upload the package.
• Make sure the Status of the app is set to “Allowed”.

2. Configure Permission Policies

In addition to users needing a Power Apps license and access rights to the app, they also need to have permissions to use/add it as a Teams App in Microsoft Teams.

When the app is uploaded to the Teams Admin Center, the person who is the Teams Administrator goes to “Permission Policies” and do the following:

• Click on and open the Permission Policy that applies to those people who will use the app. Most often this policy is called “Global (Org-wide default).
• Scroll down to “Custom apps” and click “Add apps” and then select the app you’ve uploaded.
• Click Save to Save the Policy

3. Make the app visible in the left menu in Teams.

Once the app is uploaded and we’ve set the permissions on it, it’s time to make it available in Teams. To do that we use something called “Setup policies” and it is also in the Teams Admin Center just under “Permission Policies” Here too there is a policy called “Global (Org-wide default)” but this applies then thus a Global Setup policy. It is in this policy that we specify which apps should appear in Team’s left menu. The Teams Administrator, open this policy and

• Add the app under “Installed Apps”.
• Add the app to “Pinned apps”.
• When this is done, the Teams Administrator click on Save in order to save the changes in the policy.

Patience is a good virtue

Sometimes it can take up to several hours for the policy to take effect so my advice to you here is to be patient and wait a while. Take a trip out to the coffee machine and talk to your colleagues about the weather. If you’re feeling impatient, try logging out of Teams and logging back in and you might get lucky and see your new app icon.

Finally, what should not need to be said

I take it for granted that you have of course tested your app thoroughly before packaging it and distributing it to all your colleagues.

If not, you can be sure that you will soon find out. 😉