Access Requests with Microsoft Teams

This guide will explain how to set up Microsoft Teams to receive Access Request messages from Teleport. Teleport's Microsoft Teams integration notifies individuals of Access Requests. Users can then approve and deny Access Requests by following the message link, making it easier to implement security best practices without compromising productivity.

Prerequisites

• A running Teleport cluster. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial.

• The tctl admin tool and tsh client tool.

  Visit Installation for instructions on downloading tctl and tsh.

Recommended: Configure Machine ID to provide short-lived Teleport credentials to the plugin. Before following this guide, follow a Machine ID deployment guide to run the tbot binary on your infrastructure.

• A Microsoft Teams License (Microsoft 365 Business).
• Azure console access in the organization/directory holding the Microsoft Teams License.
• An Azure resource group in the same directory. This will host resources for the Microsoft Teams Access Request plugin. You should have enough permissions to create and edit Azure Bot Services in this resource group.
• Someone with Global Admin rights on the Azure Active Directory that will grant permissions to the plugin.
• Someone with the Teams administrator role that can approve installation requests for Microsoft Teams Apps.
• Either an Azure virtual machine or Kubernetes cluster where you will run the Teleport Microsoft Teams plugin.

To check that you can connect to your Teleport cluster, sign in with tsh login, then verify that you can run tctl commands using your current credentials.

For example:

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
tctl status
Cluster  teleport.example.com
Version  16.4.7
CA pin   sha256:abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678abdc1245efgh5678

If you can connect to the cluster and run the tctl status command, you can use your current credentials to run subsequent tctl commands from your workstation. If you host your own Teleport cluster, you can also run tctl commands on the computer that hosts the Teleport Auth Service for full permissions.

Step 1/9. Define RBAC resources

Before you set up the Microsoft Teams plugin, you will need to enable Role Access Requests in your Teleport cluster.

For the purpose of this guide, we will define an editor-requester role, which can request the built-in editor role, and an editor-reviewer role that can review requests for the editor role.

Create a file called editor-request-rbac.yaml with the following content:

kind: role
version: v7
metadata:
  name: editor-reviewer
spec:
  allow:
    review_requests:
      roles: ['editor']
---
kind: role
version: v7
metadata:
  name: editor-requester
spec:
  allow:
    request:
      roles: ['editor']
      thresholds:
        - approve: 1
          deny: 1

Create the roles you defined:

tctl create -f editor-request-rbac.yaml
role 'editor-reviewer' has been createdrole 'editor-requester' has been created

Allow yourself to review requests by users with the editor-requester role by assigning yourself the editor-reviewer role.

Assign the editor-reviewer role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate commands for your authentication provider:

Create a user called myuser who has the editor-requester role. This user cannot edit your cluster configuration unless they request the editor role:

tctl users add myuser --roles=editor-requester

tctl will print an invitation URL to your terminal. Visit the URL and log in as myuser for the first time, registering credentials as configured for your Teleport cluster.

Later in this guide, you will have myuser request the editor role so you can review the request using the Teleport plugin.

Step 2/9. Install the Teleport Microsoft Teams plugin

Install the Microsoft Teams plugin on your workstation. If you are deploying the plugin on Kubernetes, you will still need to install the plugin locally in order to generate an application archive to upload later in this guide.

curl -L -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-access-msteams-v16.4.7-linux-ARCH-bin.tar.gz
tar -xzf teleport-access-msteams-v16.4.7-linux-ARCH-bin.tar.gz
cd teleport-access-msteams
sudo ./install

teleport-msteams version
teleport-msteams v16.4.7 git:teleport-msteams-v16.4.7-fffffffff go1.22

docker pull public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-msteams:16.4.7

docker run public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-msteams:16.4.7 version
teleport-msteams v16.4.7 git:teleport-msteams-v16.4.7-api/14.0.0-gd1e081e 1.22

git clone https://github.com/gravitational/teleport -b branch/v16
cd teleport/integrations/access/msteams
git checkout 16.4.7
make

teleport-msteams version
teleport-msteams v16.4.7 git:teleport-msteams-v16.4.7-fffffffff go1.22

helm repo add teleport https://charts.releases.teleport.dev

helm repo update

Step 3/9. Create a user and role for the plugin

Teleport's Access Request plugins authenticate to your Teleport cluster as a user with permissions to list and read Access Requests. This way, plugins can retrieve Access Requests from the Teleport Auth Service and present them to reviewers.

Define a user and role called access-plugin by adding the following content to a file called access-plugin.yaml:

kind: role
version: v5
metadata:
  name: access-plugin
spec:
  allow:
    rules:
      - resources: ['access_request']
        verbs: ['list', 'read']
      - resources: ['access_plugin_data']
        verbs: ['update']
---
kind: user
metadata:
  name: access-plugin
spec:
  roles: ['access-plugin']
version: v2

Create the user and role:

tctl create -f access-plugin.yaml

As with all Teleport users, the Teleport Auth Service authenticates the access-plugin user by issuing short-lived TLS credentials. In this case, we will need to request the credentials manually by impersonating the access-plugin role and user.

If you are running a self-hosted Teleport Enterprise deployment and are using tctl from the Auth Service host, you will already have impersonation privileges.

To grant your user impersonation privileges for access-plugin, define a role called access-plugin-impersonator by pasting the following YAML document into a file called access-plugin-impersonator.yaml:

kind: role
version: v7
metadata:
  name: access-plugin-impersonator
spec:
  allow:
    impersonate:
      roles:
      - access-plugin
      users:
      - access-plugin

Create the access-plugin-impersonator role:

tctl create -f access-plugin-impersonator.yaml

If you are providing identity files to the plugin with Machine ID, assign the access-plugin role to the Machine ID bot user. Otherwise, assign this role to the user you plan to use to generate credentials for the access-plugin role and user:

Assign the access-plugin-impersonator role to your Teleport user by running the appropriate commands for your authentication provider:

You will now be able to generate signed certificates for the access-plugin role and user.

Step 4/9. Export the access plugin identity

Give the plugin access to a Teleport identity file. We recommend using Machine ID for this in order to produce short-lived identity files that are less dangerous if exfiltrated, though in demo deployments, you can generate longer-lived identity files with tctl:

outputs:
- type: identity
  destination:
    type: directory
    # For this guide, /opt/machine-id is used as the destination directory.
    # You may wish to customize this. Multiple outputs cannot share the same
    # destination.
    path: /opt/machine-id

outputs:
  - type: identity
    destination:
      type: kubernetes_secret
      name: teleport-plugin-msteams-identity

tctl auth sign --user=access-plugin --out=identity

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --ttl=60060

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/teleport/api-credentials
sudo mv identity /var/lib/teleport/plugins/api-credentials

kubectl -n teleport create secret generic --from-file=identity teleport-plugin-msteams-identity

Step 5/9. Register an Azure Bot

The Access Request plugin for Microsoft Teams receives Access Request events from the Teleport Auth Service, formats them into Microsoft Teams messages, and sends them to the Microsoft Teams API to post them in your workspace. For this to work, you must register a new Azure Bot. Azure Bot is a managed service by Microsoft that allows to develop bots that interact with users through different channels, including Microsoft Teams.

Register a new Azure bot

Visit https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.AzureBot to create a new bot. Choose the bot handle so you can find the bot later in the Azure console (the bot handle will not be displayed to the user or used to configure the Microsoft Teams plugin). Also edit the Azure subscription, the resource group and the bot pricing tier.

In the "Microsoft App ID" section choose "Single Tenant" and "Create new Microsoft App ID".

Connect the bot to Microsoft Teams

Once the bot is created, open its resource page on the Azure console and navigate to the "Channels" tab. Click "Microsoft Teams" and add the Microsoft Teams channel.

The result should be as follows:

Obtain information about your Microsoft App

On the bot's "Configuration" tab, copy and keep in a safe place the values of "Microsoft App ID" and "App Tenant ID". Those two UUIDs will be used in the plugin configuration.

Click the "Manage" link next to "Microsoft App ID". This will open the app management view.

Then, go to the "Certificates & Secrets" section and choose to create a "New client secret". Use the "Copy" icon to copy the newly created secret and keep it with the previously recovered App ID and Tenant ID.

The client secret will be used by the Teleport plugin to authenticate as the bot's app when searching users and posting messages.

Specify the permissions used by the app

Still in the app management view ("Configuration", then "Manage" the Microsoft App ID), go to the "API permissions" tab.

Add the following Microsoft Graph Application permissions:

At this point the app declares the required permissions but those have not been granted.

If you are an admin, click "Grant admin consent for <directory name>". If you are not an admin, contact an admin user to grant the permissions.

Once permissions have been approved, refresh the page and check the approval status. The result should be as follows:

Step 6/9. Configure the Teleport Microsoft Teams plugin

At this point, the Teleport Microsoft Teams plugin has the credentials it needs to communicate with your Teleport cluster and Azure APIs, but the app has not been installed to Microsoft Teams yet.

In this step, you will configure the Microsoft Teams plugin to use the Azure credentials and generate the Teams App package that will be used to install the Microsoft Teams App. You will also configure the plugin to notify the right Microsoft Teams users when it receives an Access Request update.

Generate a configuration file and assets

Generate a configuration file for the plugin. The instructions depend on whether you are deploying the plugin on a virtual machine or Kubernetes:

export AZURE_APPID="your-appid"
export AZURE_TENANTID="your-tenantid"
export AZURE_APPSECRET="your-appsecret"
teleport-msteams configure /var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/assets --appID "$AZURE_APPID" --tenantID "$AZURE_TENANTID" --appSecret "$AZURE_APPSECRET"

# Example Microsoft Teams plugin configuration TOML file

# If true, channels and users existence is checked on plugin start. When a
# user is checked, the app is installed for the user if it was not
# already. Installation can take up to 10 seconds per user. It is
# advised to enable preloading unless you are sure all users already got
# the app installed to avoid possible timeouts when treating an access request.
preload = true

[teleport]
# Teleport Auth/Proxy Server address.
# addr = "example.com:3025"
#
# Should be port 3025 for Auth Server and 3080 or 443 for Proxy.
# For Teleport Cloud, should be in the form "your-account.teleport.sh:443".

# Credentials generated with `tctl auth sign`.
#
# When using --format=file:
# identity = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/identity"   # Identity file
# refresh_identity = true                                   # Refresh identity file periodically
#
# When using --format=tls:
# client_key = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/auth.key" # Teleport TLS secret key
# client_crt = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/auth.crt" # Teleport TLS certificate
# root_cas = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/auth.cas"   # Teleport CA certs
addr = "localhost:3025"
identity = "identity"
refresh_identity = true

[msapi]
# MS API IDs. Please, check the documentation.
app_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
# Either contains the app secret or the path of a file containing the secret
app_secret = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
tenant_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
teams_app_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

[role_to_recipients]
# Map roles to recipients.
#
# Provide msteams user email/id or channel URL recipients for access requests for specific roles.
# role.suggested_reviewers will automatically be treated as additional email recipients.
# "*" must be provided to match non-specified roles.
#
# "dev" = "devs-msteams-channel"
# "*" = ["admin@email.com", "admin-msteams-channel"]
"*" = ["foo@example.com"]

[log]
output = "stderr" # Logger output. Could be "stdout", "stderr" or "/var/lib/teleport/msteams.log"
severity = "INFO" # Logger severity. Could be "INFO", "ERROR", "DEBUG" or "WARN".

export AZURE_APPID="your-appid"
export AZURE_TENANTID="your-tenantid"
export AZURE_APPSECRET="your-appsecret"
teleport-msteams configure /var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/assets --appID "$AZURE_APPID" --tenantID "$AZURE_TENANTID" --appSecret "$AZURE_APPSECRET"

# Default values for slack.
# This is a YAML-formatted file.
# Declare variables to be passed into your templates.

#
# Plugin specific options
#
teleport:
  address: "teleport.example.com:443"
  identitySecretName: teleport-plugin-msteams-identity
  identitySecretPath: identity

msTeams:
  appID: "APP_ID"
  tenantID: "TENANT_ID"
  teamsAppID: "TEAMS_APP_ID"

roleToRecipients:
  "*": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"
  "editor": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"

log:
  output: stdout
  severity: INFO

Edit the configuration file

Edit the configuration file according to the instructions below.

[teleport]

The Microsoft Teams plugin uses this section to connect to your Teleport cluster.

If you are providing credentials to the plugin using a tbot binary that runs on a Linux server, make sure the value of identity is the same as the path of the identity file you configured tbot to generate, /opt/machine-id/identity.

Configure the plugin to periodically reload the identity file, ensuring that it does not attempt to connect to the Teleport Auth Service with expired credentials.

Add the following to the teleport section of the configuration:

refresh_identity = true

[msapi]/msTeams

[role_to_recipients]

The role_to_recipients map (roleToRecipients for Helm users) configures the users and channels that the Microsoft Teams plugin will notify when a user requests access to a specific role. When the Microsoft Teams plugin receives an Access Request from the Auth Service, it will look up the role being requested and identify the Microsoft Teams users and channels to notify.

[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "alice@example.com"
"dev" = ["alice@example.com", "bob@example.com"]
"dba" = "https://teams.microsoft.com/l/channel/19%3somerandomid%40thread.tacv2/ChannelName?groupId=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx&tenantId=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

roleToRecipients:
  "*": "alice@example.com"
  "dev": ["alice@example.com", "bob@example.com"]
  "dba": "https://teams.microsoft.com/l/channel/19%3somerandomid%40thread.tacv2/ChannelName?groupId=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx&tenantId=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

In the role_to_recipients map, each key is the name of a Teleport role. Each value configures the Teams user (or users) to notify. Each string must be either the email address of a Microsoft Teams user or a channel URL.

You can find the URL of a channel by opening the channel and clicking the button "Get link to channel":

The role_to_recipients map must also include an entry for "*", which the plugin looks up if no other entry matches a given role name. In the example above, requests for roles aside from dev and dba will notify alice@example.com.

tsh request create --roles=dbadmin --reviewers=alice@example.com,ivan@example.com

Configure the Microsoft Teams plugin to notify you when a user requests the editor role by adding the following to your role_to_recipients config (replace TELEPORT_USERNAME with the email of the user you assigned the editor-reviewer role earlier):

[role_to_recipients]
"*" = "TELEPORT_USERNAME"
"editor" = "TELEPORT_USERNAME"

roleToRecipients:
  "*": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"
  "editor": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"

The final configuration file should resemble the following:

# Example Microsoft Teams plugin configuration TOML file

# If true, channels and users existence is checked on plugin start. When a
# user is checked, the app is installed for the user if it was not
# already. Installation can take up to 10 seconds per user. It is
# advised to enable preloading unless you are sure all users already got
# the app installed to avoid possible timeouts when treating an access request.
preload = true

[teleport]
# Teleport Auth/Proxy Server address.
# addr = "example.com:3025"
#
# Should be port 3025 for Auth Server and 3080 or 443 for Proxy.
# For Teleport Cloud, should be in the form "your-account.teleport.sh:443".

# Credentials generated with `tctl auth sign`.
#
# When using --format=file:
# identity = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/identity"   # Identity file
# refresh_identity = true                                   # Refresh identity file periodically
#
# When using --format=tls:
# client_key = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/auth.key" # Teleport TLS secret key
# client_crt = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/auth.crt" # Teleport TLS certificate
# root_cas = "/var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/auth.cas"   # Teleport CA certs
addr = "localhost:3025"
identity = "identity"
refresh_identity = true

[msapi]
# MS API IDs. Please, check the documentation.
app_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
# Either contains the app secret or the path of a file containing the secret
app_secret = "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
tenant_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
teams_app_id = "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"

[role_to_recipients]
# Map roles to recipients.
#
# Provide msteams user email/id or channel URL recipients for access requests for specific roles.
# role.suggested_reviewers will automatically be treated as additional email recipients.
# "*" must be provided to match non-specified roles.
#
# "dev" = "devs-msteams-channel"
# "*" = ["admin@email.com", "admin-msteams-channel"]
"*" = ["foo@example.com"]

[log]
output = "stderr" # Logger output. Could be "stdout", "stderr" or "/var/lib/teleport/msteams.log"
severity = "INFO" # Logger severity. Could be "INFO", "ERROR", "DEBUG" or "WARN".

# Default values for slack.
# This is a YAML-formatted file.
# Declare variables to be passed into your templates.

#
# Plugin specific options
#
teleport:
  address: "teleport.example.com:443"
  identitySecretName: teleport-plugin-msteams-identity
  identitySecretPath: identity

msTeams:
  appID: "APP_ID"
  tenantID: "TENANT_ID"
  teamsAppID: "TEAMS_APP_ID"

roleToRecipients:
  "*": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"
  "editor": "TELEPORT_USERNAME"

log:
  output: stdout
  severity: INFO

Step 7/9. Add and configure the Teams App

Upload the Teams App

Open Microsoft Teams and go to "Apps", "Manage your apps", then in the additional choices menu choose "Upload an App".

If you're a Teams admin, choose "Upload an app to your org's app catalog". This will allow you to skip the approval step. If you're not a Microsoft Teams admin, choose "Submit an app to your org".

Upload the app.zip file you generated earlier.

Approve the Teams App

If you are not a Teams admin and chose "Submit an app to your org", you will have to ask a Teams admin to approve it.

They can do so by connecting to the Teams admin dashboard, searching "TeleBot", selecting it and choosing "Allow".

Add the Teams App to a Team

Once the app is approved it should appear in the "Apps built for your org" section. Add the newly uploaded app to a team. Open the app, click "Add to a team", choose the "General" channel of your team and click "Set up a bot".

Note: Once an app is added to a team, it can post on all channels.

Step 8/9. Test the Teams App

Once Teleport is running, you've created the Teams App, and the plugin is configured, you can now run the plugin and test the workflow.

Test Microsoft Teams connectivity

Start the plugin in validation mode:

teleport-msteams validate <email of your teams account>

If everything works fine, the log output should look like this:

teleport-msteams v16.4.7 go1.22

 - Checking application xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx status...
 - Application found in the team app store (internal ID: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx)
 - User xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx found: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
 - Application installation ID for user: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 - Chat ID for user: 19:xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx@unq.gbl.spaces
 - Chat web URL: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/19%3Axxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx_xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx%40unq.gbl.spaces/0?tenantId=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
 - Hailing the user...
 - Message sent, ID: XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Check your MS Teams!

The plugin should exit and you should have received two messages through Microsoft Teams.

Start the MS Teams Plugin

After you configured and validated the MS Teams plugin, you can now run the plugin and test the workflow.

teleport-msteams start -d
DEBU   DEBUG logging enabled msteams/main.go:120INFO   Starting Teleport MS Teams Plugin 16.4.7: msteams/app.go:74DEBU   Attempting GET teleport.example.com:443/webapi/find webclient/webclient.go:129DEBU   Checking Teleport server version msteams/app.go:242INFO   MS Teams app found in org app store id:292e2881-38ab-7777-8aa7-cefed1404a63 name:TeleBot msteams/app.go:179INFO   Preloading recipient data... msteams/app.go:185INFO   Recipient found, chat found chat_id:19:a8c06deb-aa2b-4db5-9c78-96e48f625aef_a36aec2e-f11c-4219-b79a-19UUUU57de70@unq.gbl.spaces kind:user recipient:jeff@example.com msteams/app.go:195INFO   Recipient data preloaded and cached. msteams/app.go:198DEBU   Watcher connected watcherjob/watcherjob.go:121INFO   Plugin is ready msteams/app.go:227

docker run -v <path-to-config>:/etc/teleport-msteams.toml public.ecr.aws/gravitational/teleport-plugin-msteams:16.4.7 start

helm upgrade --install teleport-plugin-msteams teleport/teleport-plugin-msteams --values teleport-msteams-helm.yaml

kubectl logs deploy/teleport-plugin-msteams

kubectl rollout restart deployment teleport-plugin-msteams

Create an Access Request

Create an Access Request and check if the plugin works as expected with the following steps.

• As an Admin
• As a User
• From the Web UI

A Teleport admin can create an Access Request for another user with tctl:

tctl request create myuser --roles=editor

Users can use tsh to create an Access Request and log in with approved roles:

tsh request create --roles=editor
Seeking request approval... (id: 8f77d2d1-2bbf-4031-a300-58926237a807)

Users can request access using the Web UI by visiting the "Access Requests" tab and clicking "New Request":

The user you configured earlier to review the request should receive a direct message from "TeleBot" in Microsoft Teams allowing them to visit a link in the Teleport Web UI and either approve or deny the request.

Resolve the request

Once you receive an Access Request message, click the link to visit Teleport and approve or deny the request:

Replace REQUEST_ID with the id of the request
tctl request approve REQUEST_ID
tctl request deny REQUEST_ID

Replace REQUEST_ID with the id of the request
tsh request review --approve REQUEST_ID
tsh request review --deny REQUEST_ID

Once the request is resolved, the Microsoft Teams bot will update the Access Request message to reflect its new status.

Step 9/9. Set up systemd

This section is only relevant if you are running the Teleport Microsoft Teams plugin on a virtual machine.

In production, we recommend starting the Teleport plugin daemon via an init system like systemd. Here's the recommended Teleport plugin service unit file for systemd:

[Unit]
Description=Teleport MsTeams Plugin
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/teleport-msteams start --config=/etc/teleport-msteams.toml
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
PIDFile=/run/teleport-msteams.pid

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Save this as teleport-msteams.service in either /usr/lib/systemd/system/ or another unit file load path supported by systemd.

Enable and start the plugin:

sudo systemctl enable teleport-msteams
sudo systemctl start teleport-msteams

Next steps

• Read our guides to configuring Resource Access Requests and Role Access Requests so you can get the most out of your Access Request plugins.