Does a Teams Admin needs a Teams license?

Teams license (MS365 license) is a cost, so we usually try to minimize them. For Teams admin roles we assume that we don’t need them since we are managing it and not using it (maybe if we want to make some tests).

Well… there is at least this case that you will find out but only if you look under the hood.

ISSUE

As you know, you can distribute the meetings backgrounds centrally from the Teams Admin Center meeting policies page:

But for some of you, will might get an error “We can’t get your images. Try again. If you continue to have problems, contact Microsoft customer support” and “We can’t load any data. Try again?”

You can scratch your head, contact MS support or peak inside the HTTP request to find out the real reason of the generic error message:

SOLUTION/WORKAROUND

1. Assign to your Teams Admin user a valid MS365 and/or Teams license (exploratory might work)
2. Wait and you would be able to access the page and manage the backgrounds now
3. (optional) free-up the license back from the Admin account

Additional note: If you read closely the documentation on ‘Use Microsoft Teams administrator roles to manage Teams‘ you will find a small remark below the table “²Microsoft Teams admin center³ Teams administrator account must have a valid Teams license”