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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.

The Microsoft Teams Access Request plugin

Prerequisites​

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 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. tctl is supported on macOS and Linux machines.

For example:

$ tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com --user=email@example.com
$ tctl status
# Cluster  teleport.example.com
# Version  15.4.22
# 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: v5
metadata:
  name: editor-reviewer
spec:
  allow:
    review_requests:
      roles: ['editor']
---
kind: role
version: v5
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 created
role '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:

  1. Retrieve your local user's roles as a comma-separated list:

    $ ROLES=$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.roles | join(",")')

  2. Edit your local user to add the new role:

    $ tctl users update $(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') \
      --set-roles "${ROLES?},editor-reviewer"

  3. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

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.

We currently only provide linux-amd64 binaries. You can also compile these plugins from source. You can run the plugin from a remote host or your local development machine.

$ curl -L -O https://get.gravitational.com/teleport-access-msteams-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf teleport-access-msteams-v15.4.22-linux-amd64-bin.tar.gz
$ cd teleport-access-msteams
$ sudo ./install

Make sure the binary is installed:

$ teleport-msteams version
teleport-msteams v15.4.22 git:teleport-msteams-v15.4.22-fffffffff go1.21

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: v5
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:

  1. Retrieve your local user's roles as a comma-separated list:

    $ ROLES=$(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.roles | join(",")')

  2. Edit your local user to add the new role:

    $ tctl users update $(tsh status -f json | jq -r '.active.username') \
      --set-roles "${ROLES?},access-plugin-impersonator"

  3. Sign out of the Teleport cluster and sign in again to assume the new role.

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:

Configure tbot with an output that will produce the credentials needed by the plugin. As the plugin will be accessing the Teleport API, the correct output type to use is identity.

For this guide, the directory destination will be used. This will write these credentials to a specified directory on disk. Ensure that this directory can be written to by the Linux user that tbot runs as, and that it can be read by the Linux user that the plugin will run as.

Modify your tbot configuration to add an identity output.

If running tbot on a Linux server, use the directory output to write identity files to the /opt/machine-id directory:

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

If running tbot on Kubernetes, write the identity file to Kubernetes secret instead:

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

If operating tbot as a background service, restart it. If running tbot in one-shot mode, execute it now.

You should now see an identity file under /opt/machine-id or a Kubernetes secret named teleport-plugin-msteams-identity. This contains the private key and signed certificates needed by the plugin to authenticate with the Teleport Auth Service.

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".

Create Azure Bot

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:

Add Bot Channel

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.

Manage Bot App

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:

Permission nameReason
AppCatalog.Read.AllUsed to list Teams Apps and check the app is installed.
User.Read.AllUsed to get notification recipients.
TeamsAppInstallation.ReadWriteSelfForUser.AllUsed to initiate communication with a user that never interacted with the Teams App before.
TeamsAppInstallation.ReadWriteSelfForTeam.AllUsed to discover if the app is installed in the Team.

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.

Specify App Permissions

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

Granted App Permissions

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:

The Teleport Microsoft Teams plugin uses a config file in TOML format. The configure subcommand generates the directory /var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/assets containing the TOML configuration file and an app.zip file that will be used later to add the Teams App into the organization catalog.

Run the following command on your virtual machine:

$ 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"

This should result in a config file like the one below:

(!examples/resources/plugins/teleport-msteams.toml!)

Copy the /var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/assets/app.zip file to your local computer. You will have to upload it to Microsoft Teams later.

On the host where you will run the Microsoft Teams plugin, move the file /var/lib/teleport/plugins/msteams/assets/teleport-msteams.toml to /etc/teleport-msteams.toml. You can then edit the copy located in /etc/.

Configure command

The configure command is not idempotent. It generates a new Microsoft Teams application UUID with each execution. It is not possible to use an app.zip and a TOML configuration generated by two different executions.

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.

addr: Include the hostname and HTTPS port of your Teleport Proxy Service or Teleport Enterprise Cloud account (e.g., teleport.example.com:443 or mytenant.teleport.sh:443).

identity: Fill this in with the path to the identity file you exported earlier.

client_key, client_crt, root_cas: Comment these out, since we are not using them in this configuration.

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​

Make sure the app_id, app_secret, tenant_id, and teams_app_id fields are filled in with the correct information, which you obtained earlier in this guide.

[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.

Here is an example of a role_to_recipients map. Each value can be a single string or an array of strings:

[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"

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":

Copy Teams 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.

Suggested reviewers

Users can suggest reviewers when they create an Access Request, e.g.,:

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

If an Access Request includes suggested reviewers, the Microsoft Teams plugin will add these to the list of channels to notify. If a suggested reviewer is an email address, the plugin will look up the the direct message channel for that address and post a message in that channel.

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"

The final configuration file should resemble the following:

(!examples/resources/plugins/teleport-msteams.toml!)

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".

Upload Teams 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".

Upload Teams App

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".

Add Teams App

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 v15.4.22 go1.21

 - 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.

Validate Bot Message

Start the MS Teams Plugin​

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

Run the following command to start the Teleport MS Teams plugin. The -d flag will provide debug information to ensure that the plugin can connect to MS Teams and your Teleport cluster:

$ teleport-msteams start -d
DEBU   DEBUG logging enabled msteams/main.go:120
INFO   Starting Teleport MS Teams Plugin 15.4.22: msteams/app.go:74
DEBU   Attempting GET teleport.example.com:443/webapi/find webclient/webclient.go:129
DEBU   Checking Teleport server version msteams/app.go:242
INFO   MS Teams app found in org app store id:292e2881-38ab-7777-8aa7-cefed1404a63 name:TeleBot msteams/app.go:179
INFO   Preloading recipient data... msteams/app.go:185
INFO   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:195
INFO   Recipient data preloaded and cached. msteams/app.go:198
DEBU   Watcher connected watcherjob/watcherjob.go:121
INFO   Plugin is ready msteams/app.go:227

Create an Access Request​

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

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

$ tctl request create myuser --roles=editor

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:

Reviewing a request

Reviewing from the command line

You can also review an Access Request from the command line:

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

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

Auditing Access Requests

When the Microsoft Teams plugin posts an Access Request notification to a channel, anyone with access to the channel can view the notification and follow the link. While users must be authorized via their Teleport roles to review Access Requests, you should still check the Teleport audit log to ensure that the right users are reviewing the right requests.

When auditing Access Request reviews, check for events with the type Access Request Reviewed in the Teleport Web UI.

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:

(!examples/systemd/plugins/teleport-msteams.service!)

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​