How to redirect to MS Teams tab app from outside of Teams on mobile without opening in browser [DeepLink]

Question

Hi All,

I have one tab application (say MyApp) in MS Teams which is built using React and other related technology. There is a scenario when mobile user would like to jump to MyApp with help of Deep Link from some other app like (Whatsapp / LinkedIn / Any app).

As per this link, below format can be used to create the DeepLink of MyApp:

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/entity/<appId>/<entityId>?webUrl=<entityWebUrl>&label=<entityLabel>&context=<context>

When user open this DeepLink in some external apps, it is opening browser first and then redirecting to MS Teams mobile app. I think this is happening because we are using https:// URL scheme. It is fine when user is using MS Teams on browser but on native MS Teams, it's not a good user experience.

Now question is that, can we replace msteams:// with https:// to open native MS Teams instead of browser. If we can use it, it will convert DeepLink in below format:

msteams://teams.microsoft.com/l/entity/<appId>/<entityId>?webUrl=<entityWebUrl>&label=<entityLabel>&context=<context>

It is not mentioned anywhere on the above link, so I am looking for an official answer here.

Answer 1

Apologies for the delay in responding - We checked this internally and got the below response.

The problem with using the msteams: protocol directly is that if the user doesn't have Teams installed, the protocol launch would most likely fail (at least it would on Windows/Mac). The launcher provides a way for the customer to acquire the Teams Client if they don't have it installed:

Hence, it's not recommended to use the msteams: protocol directly unless the launch source has some way to ensure that the Teams Client is installed before executing the deep link.