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Setting up Microsoft Teams and Outlook 365 Connections
Can someone please point me to the direct documentation on how you setup the Microsoft Teams and Outlook 365 Connections? For each document I find for Outlook 365 here >> Configure the Office 365 Outlook activity and for Teams here >> Configure Teams activity settings
Each of these only state: "Add a connection to your Teams activity. You can create a new connection or use an existing one." and "Add a connection to your Outlook activity at the top of the settings. You can create a new connection or use an existing one."
There is no documentation I can find tells what kind of permissions you need to setup the OAuth 2.0 or give a Service Principal. Can someone please point to me where this is documented or tell in here how to setup those connections specifically and not just "add a connection". Also, is the "Microsoft365" Connection under "Manage connections & Gateways" the same thing as the "Outlook 365 Email"?
I need to communicate to my I.T. dept the requirements these authentication methods need and cannot answer that until I know the details of how these are setup.
6 Replies
RajeshMAdvocate II
Hi,
The activities you are referring to are now labeled as "legacy". So you would want to use "Outlook 365 Email" activity and the "Microsoft Teams" activity instead. This is probably why the Connection Type in "Manage connections & Gateways" does not show them.
That said, microsoft seems to have not updated their Connector-Overview page with these new activities.
As a workaround, I found that if you use the Microsoft Teams Activity (same with the Office 365 Email activity), and try setup a data source, you will find there is only one "Authentication kind": Organizational account. You need to sign in with the account that permissions to read/write to the Channel or Group you want to interact with:
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rizalard0684Resolver IV
hey Anonymous you're actually right that this is confusing because there is a documentation gap.
What I found is that Teams activity and Outlook 365 activity in Fabric Pipelines only support user based OAuth authentication. Service Principal is not yet supported today.
This "user based OAuth authentication" means signing in as a Microsoft 365 user (by configuring a Teams or Office 365 Outlook activity and click “Add connection”). That sign‑in grants delegated Microsoft Graph permissions (for example, sending mail or posting Teams messages). Relevant doc I found about this is here:
The required permissions (Mail.Send, Teams messaging) are granted at sign‑in and are scoped for that user.
There are some limitations what you might want to mention when talking to IT:
- Fabric pipelines will break if deployed to another workspace without re‑creating the connection
- CI/CD not yet supportedTeams activity - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Office 365 Outlook activity - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Appreciate if you can 'Kudos' and/or 'Accept as Solution' if this answered your query.
Hi, I uses service account instead of personal or sp to perform teams and outlook communication. These are actual accounts that is used to send email notification or team message. It would require the neccessary license to the account to send mail or message.
When configuring the connection, I would login to the service account to configure the connection in the pipeline.
Hope this information helps.
Adding to what rizalard0684 and RajeshM mentioned - one more practical point for your IT department:
The Microsoft365 connection under "Manage connections & Gateways" is actually DIFFERENT from the Outlook 365 Email activity connection. The Microsoft365 connection is for general Microsoft 365 data sources (like SharePoint), while the Outlook/Teams activities use their own dedicated connection type.
For IT requirements, here is the key info they typically need:
1. OAuth 2.0 with delegated permissions (not app-only)
2. The user account MUST have appropriate M365 license (E3/E5)
3. For Teams - the account needs Teams license
4. For Outlook - Exchange Online licenseThe connection will break if the pipeline is exported/imported across workspaces - this is a known limitation. For CI/CD, you will need to recreate connections in each environment.
it typically recommend using a dedicated service account for production pipelines to avoid personal account dependencies.
