When IT policy blocks the Sidepanel

The Sidepanel is installed either as a Microsoft Outlook add-in or as a browser extension, and many organizations centrally control both. If your IT team has locked either one down, the installation steps do not work and there is nothing you can change on your own machine to fix it.

This article helps you recognize a policy restriction, tells you exactly what to ask for, and gives you something to work with in the meantime. If the Sidepanel installs but then fails to load, see Troubleshoot the Sidepanel instead.

How to tell a policy restriction from a fault

A policy restriction is rarely a clear error message. It comes in two shapes, and the second one is the one people misread as a bug.

It never starts

• The install button does nothing, or reports that your administrator does not allow it.
• Tekst does not appear in the add-in store at all when you search for it.
• A setting you need is dimmed, or marked as managed by your organization.
• A colleague on the same version of the same application has the Sidepanel and you do not.

It starts and then reverses

A managed device often lets you begin and undoes the result moments later, which looks far more like a failed download than like a policy:

• The extension installs, the Tekst icon appears in your toolbar, and then it is gone again. Or it stays in the extensions list but is switched off, marked as controlled by your organization, with no way to switch it back on.
• In Microsoft Edge, you accept the banner that allows extensions from other stores and the install is still refused. That banner is a personal setting, so accepting it does not override a central policy.
• The Outlook add-in reports that it was added, but never appears in the ribbon. Or it is there until you restart Outlook and gone afterwards. If your organization only allows add-ins it has deployed itself, a restart is usually when the unapproved one gets cleared away.
• The install finishes, but the sign-in window never opens or closes immediately. This one is worth separating out: the Sidepanel is installed correctly and a different policy, on popups, is stopping the sign-in. See The Sidepanel does not load on your network.

Two things tell this apart from a genuine fault. It stops at the same point every time, however often you retry, and it behaves the same way for everyone with your device setup while working normally for people outside it. A real fault is usually intermittent, or limited to one machine.

Note where it stops before you raise a request. The stage it reaches is what tells your IT team which policy is in the way, and it turns "Tekst will not install" into something they can act on in one pass.

If an installation got halfway and left something behind, remove that copy before trying again once the restriction is lifted, so the retry starts from a clean state.

None of this is a fault in Tekst, and repeating the installation steps will not change the outcome. The restriction has to be lifted by whoever manages your devices.

The browser extension

The Sidepanel extension is published in the Chrome Web Store, and works in both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

How to recognize the restriction

• Add to Chrome does nothing, or the install stops with a message about your administrator.
• The chrome://extensions or edge://extensions page reports the extension as blocked by your organization.
• In Edge, the setting that allows extensions from other stores is dimmed or managed.

What to ask for

Ask your IT administrator to allow the Tekst Sidepanel extension. The useful detail to include in your request: they do not have to open up the Chrome Web Store for everyone to do this. Both Chrome and Edge let an administrator keep the store restricted in general and still allow one specific extension by its extension ID.

The extension ID is the long string of letters at the end of the extension's Chrome Web Store address, so copying that address into your request gives them everything they need.

Administrators can also push the extension out to the right people directly, so nobody has to install it by hand.

For the Edge-specific steps and a link to Microsoft's extension policy documentation, see Install the Sidepanel browser extension on Microsoft Edge.

The Outlook app

The Outlook version of the Sidepanel is a Microsoft 365 add-in, and organizations frequently restrict who may add one.

How to recognize the restriction

• Searching for "Tekst" in the Outlook add-in store returns nothing.
• The option to get add-ins is missing or disabled in Outlook.
• The add-in appears for colleagues but not for you, which usually means it was deployed centrally to a group you are not in.

What to ask for

Ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to deploy the Tekst add-in for your organization and assign it to the people who need it. In the Microsoft 365 admin center this is done under Integrated apps, and it works even when users are not allowed to acquire add-ins themselves. It is also the setup most IT teams prefer, because the add-in then appears for the right people without anyone installing anything.

Two things are worth mentioning in your request:

• Ask to be included in the assignment explicitly. A deployment scoped to one team is the most common reason one person is missing the panel while everyone else has it.
• A new assignment can take a few hours to appear in Outlook. If it does not show up immediately, that is expected. Restart Outlook and check again later before reporting it as failed.

For the installation steps once the add-in is available to you, see Set up the Sidepanel as an Outlook app.

Network policies count too

Allowing the installation is not always enough. A web gateway, proxy, or firewall can still stop the panel reaching the addresses it needs once it is installed, which produces a panel that installs cleanly and then never loads. If you are already raising a request with IT, it saves a round trip to cover both at once.

The Sidepanel does not load on your network lists the addresses the panel itself needs, along with the popup, websocket, and conditional access policies that stop the panel even when those addresses load. Troubleshoot Firewall has the full list of Tekst domains.

What you can do in the meantime

You can still review your work while the request is being handled:

• If the Outlook add-in is restricted, the browser extension gives you the same Sidepanel next to Outlook on the web. See Set up the Sidepanel as a browser extension.
• If the browser extension is restricted, the Outlook add-in gives you the same panel inside the Outlook application.
• If both are restricted, Approval Forms can still be reviewed in the Tekst web platform itself, in the messages module. It is less convenient than reviewing next to the email, but nothing is lost and no approval goes unanswered. Accounts that only sign in to the Tekst apps and not to the web platform are the exception here, so if that is your seat type, ask your Tekst administrator what to do while the restriction is in place.

Getting help

If your IT team needs more detail before approving the request, contact support@tekst.com. We are happy to answer their questions directly, and to join a short call with them if that moves things along faster.