In projects inclined to the Microsoft ecosystem, Teams is probably the best collaboration option, especially if your team members are dislocated. Probably because using different Office 365 accounts i had a hard time getting the Teams-Addin to work with Outlook. This is a know problem as you can find numerous articles on the web from people asking for help about this issue. Microsoft is working to enhance the Teams / Outlook experience.
One especially helpful article was Missing Teams Outlook Add-in by Michael LaMontagne (@RealTimeUC). Michael was the only one trying to dig deeper into the nitty-gritty details of COM-registration between Outlook and the Teams .NET application, deployed using Squirrel.Windows (as most Electron-based desktop-apps on Windows, e.g. Slack etc.).
He finally got the Teams-AddIn working by duplicating registry keys from a working machine. However, after reviewing the Teams & Teams Meeting AddIn startup behavior, it's even simpler.
The Microsoft Teams application always COM-registers the Team-Addin for Outlook.
However, if not enabled for your Outlook/Office365 subscription it deletes a few registry keys on startup, namely HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\TeamsAddin.Connect
- so Outlook simply won't load it on startup.
So here is how to hack the Teams Meeting Button into Outlook, cf. start_outlook_teams.bat:
- Start Teams (deletes registry keys!)
- Add registry keys from
enable_teams.reg
- Start Outlook
Enjoy the New Teams Meeting ribbon button in the calendar view!
Unfortunately, you will have repeat this everytime you restart Teams.
For me the issue was the Microsoft Store version of Outlook. After 2 days of hair-pulling, I found out that one can just go to office.com and click on "Install Office" on top right. It gives you a single exe to install office. Install it, and restart Teams and AFTER that Outlook. All done.