Create Azure DevOps pipelines for a Microsoft Teams app built with SPFx

In this post, let's walk-through the configuration needed to create Azure DevOps build and release pipelines for a Microsoft Teams solution. 

The solution is built using the SharePoint Framework and will be surfaced in Microsoft Teams as a Tab. 

As the code for the SPFx solution is being hosted in a GitHub repository, I will only focus on the Azure Pipelines configuration. For information on how to work with Azure Repos, see the official Microsoft docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/spfx/toolchain/implement-ci-cd-with-azure-devops

These are the high level steps we are going to follow:

Build pipeline:

1) Create production package of the SPFx solution (.sppkg)

2) Create a Teams manifest package (.zip) 

3) Publish the SPFx and Teams packages as Artefacts to be consumed from the Release pipeline

Release pipeline:

1) Deploy the SPFx package to the SharePoint Tenant App Catalog (using the Office 365 CLI)

2) Deploy the Teams manifest package to the Microsoft Teams App Catalog (using the Office 365 CLI)

So without further ado, here are the screenshots and scripts to achieve this:

(Click on the images to zoom)

Build pipeline:

Use Node 8.12.0:

npm install:

gulp bundle --ship:

gulp package-solution --ship:

The .sppkg file needs to be copied to staging directory in order to be published to the release pipeline:

Create a .zip file for the teams app catalog and copy it to the staging directory as well:

Publish the .sppkg and .zip files so that they can be consumed from the Release pipeline:

Release pipeline: 

Now to create a new Release Pipeline which will deploy the packages to the respective app catalogs in the tenants.

The Artefacts used will be the .sppkg file and the .zip file for Teams which was published in the previous step:

Overview of tasks in the Release pipeline:

Before moving on to the tasks, we also need to configure some variables to hold the information for the tenants, credentials etc.

The username and password should be for an account with global admin permissions. This is because the Microsoft Graph API (used by the Office 365 CLI) needs this permission to deploy apps to the Microsoft Teams App catalog:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/teamsapp-publish?view=graph-rest-1.0#permissions

The TeamsManifestId will be used to check if the app already exists in the Teams App catalog. This can be fetched from the manifest.json file in the teams folder of the SPFx solution:

If you are feeling adventurous, you could look at cracking open the .zip file from the Release pipeline and then grabbing the id on-the-fly instead of having to specify it in a variable.

Next, we will need to use Node (same task as the build pipeline) and install the Office 365 CLI on the Release agent using:

npm install -g office365-cli

Next, we need to deploy the SPFx package to the SharePoint Tenant App Catalog:

Here is the script as a gist:

And lastly, we need to publish the Teams manifest to the Microsoft Teams App Catalog. We will do this using the Office 365 CLI as well. Thanks to Elio and Waldek to get this functionality in the Office 365 CLI at lightning speed!

Here is the script as a gist:

And that's it! You now have build and release pipelines configured to deploy SPFx solutions and Teams apps. The webpart will now be available in SharePoint and the tab will be available in Teams:

 Hope you found this walk-through useful!