September 14, 2009
This is the tenth installment in a series of posts about the new features and options in AppSense Version 8 Service Pack 2. (If you have not yet downloaded this latest release, you can read more info and download it from here )
AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 SP2 includes an automatic refresh of items which use the following registry keys, or subkeys:
control panel\accessibility\stickykeys
control panel\appearance
control panel\colors
control panel\cursors
control panel\desktop
control panel\international
control panel\keyboard
control panel\mouse
keyboard layout
software\microsoft\plus!
software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\explorer
software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\policies\system\wallpaper
software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\themes
These registry keys are all refreshed by using the SystemParametersInfo win32 function to individually set known items.
In addition, any change to the desktop folders causes an icon refresh to be sent and AppSense Environment Manager also broadcasts a system wide policy update message.
Refreshes are sent after all other actions have taken place.
A broadcast message for environment variables is sent whenever Environment Manager updates any variables. Environment Manager listens for broadcasts from other programs, such as VBScripts, to pick up any environment variable changes from within them.
Tip: If the key you are setting requires a refresh but is not in the list above, try setting a dummy value that matches one of the above registry keys. This forces a refresh.
P:S
As this is an ever growing blog topic, the previous posts on the other new features we have detailed can be found below:
NEW FEATURE No. 1 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Run As
NEW FEATURE No. 2 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Connect As
NEW FEATURE No. 3 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Improved compression and data handling protocol
NEW FEATURE No. 4 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Manipulation of files in Personalization Analysis
NEW FEATURE No. 5 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Run Once
NEW FEATURE No. 6 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Group SID Refresh
NEW FEATURE No. 7 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Trigger Action Time Audit Event
NEW FEATURE No. 8 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Stop If Fails
NEW FEATURE No. 9 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – New Application Categories in the User Interface
NEW FEATURE No. 10 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Refresh
NEW FEATURE No. 11 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Registry Hive Exclusions
4 Comments | 
general, Group Policy, Printing, user environment management | Tagged: AppSense, Desktop Settings, Environment Manager, Group Policy, Langauge, Logon Scripts, Logon Times, Mouse, Personality, Personalization, Policies, Printing, Profile, profiles, Refresh, Registry keys, Registry Settings, UEM, user environment management | 
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Posted by Oliver Sills
September 7, 2009
This is the eigth installment in a series of posts about the new features and options in AppSense Version 8 Service Pack 2. (If you have not yet downloaded this latest release, you can read more info and download it from here )
AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 introduces a new option – Stop If Fails.
In order to emulate functionality from earlier versions of Environment Manager, the Stop If Fails option can be utilized to prevent subsequent processing of child nodes. This does not alter the existing behavior of other actions and parallel nodes.
Note: By default, any action or condition that fails automatically stops the processing of subsequent child actions or child conditions.
On upgrading from a 7.x Environment Manager configuration, all rules are converted to reusable conditions and Stop If Fails is applied to each condition where referenced in the main configuration body.
Note: Stop If Fails is not available from within either reusable nodes or reusable conditions. Copying or moving nodes or conditions that contain the Stop If Fails option to reusable nodes or reusable conditions results in those Stop If Fails options being removed. However, Stop If Fails can still be applied to the reusable node when referenced from within the main body of the configuration.
P:S
As this is an ever growing blog topic, the previous posts on the other new features we have detailed can be found below:
NEW FEATURE No. 1 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Run As
NEW FEATURE No. 2 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Connect As
NEW FEATURE No. 3 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Improved compression and data handling protocol
NEW FEATURE No. 4 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Manipulation of files in Personalization Analysis
NEW FEATURE No. 5 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Run Once
NEW FEATURE No. 6 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Group SID Refresh
NEW FEATURE No. 7 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Trigger Action Time Audit Event
NEW FEATURE No. 8 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Stop If Fails
NEW FEATURE No. 9 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – New Application Categories in the User Interface
NEW FEATURE No. 10 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Refresh
NEW FEATURE No. 11 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Registry Hive Exclusions
9 Comments | general, Group Policy, user environment management | Tagged: AppSense, dependencies, dependency, Environment Manager, Group Policy, import, Logon Scripts, Logon Times, Personality, Personalization, Policies, Profile, profiles, Registry keys, Registry Settings, reusable, stop, UEM, upgrade, upgrading, user environment management | Permalink
Posted by Oliver Sills
September 3, 2009
Live from VMworld 09, AppSense – the world leading User Environment Management solution provider – are extremely pleased to be awarded Gold in the Best Desktop Virtualization award for AppSense Environment Manager 8.0.
AppSense beat off strong competition from Liquidware Labs for their Desktop Virtualization Diagnostics tool, Stratusphere, and Workspace Virtualization vendor Virtual Computer Inc. for their NxTop product.
Like most that witness the capabilities of AppSense, the VMworld judges said “AppSense rocked our boat… It offers the most complete user environment management system out there.” This comes as a further endorsement (following the recent announcement from Citrix) on the importance of a true UEM solution to enable enterprise adoption of VDI at lowest possible cost over and above basic in-built profile management technologies.
AppSense Environment Manager enables IT to deliver fully personalized virtual desktops from just a single set of OS and Application images, enabling scalable user adoption. UEM allows organizations to implement virtual desktops at much lower TCO than using Profile Management alone. “UEM addresses not just personal settings and profile data, but also the initial configuration of a desktop, including applying user installed applications, providing a ‘follow-me’ personality with cross operating system platform support, as well as enterprise-scalability and end-to-end visibility. Personalization settings can be managed across multiple operating systems, desktop delivery mechanisms and on virtual, physical and offline devices.” explains Pete Rawlinson, VP of Marketing for AppSense.
Oliver Sills, Senior Product Manager for AppSense Environment Manager said, “As you can imagine, we are delighted to win such a coveted award at this prestigious event. We are continually working with our customers and partners to develop the solution and I would like to dedicate this award to our strong and committed development teams who have worked tirelessly to produce such a great product.”
Looking ahead, AppSense will continue to work with customers to enable some of the largest VDI deployments in the world, along with the development of the UEM solution set… with some extremely exciting product developments in the pipeline…
A list of the winners from the other categories can be found here
Further to my blog post, the official AppSense Press Release on winning this award can be found here
Jon Wallace, Senior Solution Architect and Head of US System Engineers
5 Comments | Citrix, roaming profiles, rto, Sepago, Streaming, TS, user environment management, User Profile Manager, VDI, virtual profiles, VMware, VMworld, XenDesktop | Tagged: AppSense, Citrix, customers, Desktop Virtualization, Environment Manager, Last Write Wins, liquidware, Microsoft, nxtop, Personality, Personalization, Profile, profiles, Registry keys, Registry Settings, Rollback, stratusphere, UEM, user environment management, VDI, View, virtual computer, VMware, VMworld, XenDesktop | Permalink
Posted by Gareth Kitson
September 2, 2009
Live from VMworld 2009 – A press release shows that VMware are to OEM the RTO Virtual Profiles Product into VMware View.
On the recent announcement at VMworld 2009, VMware are planning to OEM the RTO Virtual Profiles™ technology into VMware View – this is great news, and yet another proof point of the importance of user personalization in the virtual desktop space. It looks as though VMware have made a similar move Citrix did some months back when they acquired SepagoPROFILES for inclusion into their Xen line, and it makes total sense.
Let’s take a minute to appreciate the basic premise of how to reduce desktop TCO through virtualization. The only way to deliver cost-effective virtual desktops is to standardize the corporate image. However, if you standardize, then you also have to provide personalization capabilities in order to get the user adoption needed to make the transition to virtual desktops a success. In this respect, providing some level of personalization baked into platform solutions such as View is necessary.
By adding RTO technology, VMware will leverage the Windows User Roaming Profile – which has been successfully used in Terminal Services environments for many years. This will certainly ease some of the pains typically associated with Roaming Profiles, such as profile corruption and slow logon times. However, in more complex, enterprise environments, something more than profile management is required to provide a local PC equivalent experience from a virtualized, standard corporate desktop (as Sumit Dhawan has explained here). Personalizing a virtual desktop requires the ability to automatically set-up and configure the desktop based on the user’s role and context (e.g. what printers they can use, what drives they can access, use of peripheral devices), support for the installation and persistence of user-installed applications, as well as the application of all user-customized settings across all applications. All these in combination are known as the ‘user environment’, and the most important characteristic of the user environment is that it is client OS and delivery mechanism agnostic – effectively providing a ‘follow me’ user personality anywhere, using any delivery method and to any device. This is simply not possible using profile management alone, and why a User Environment Management Solution is required.
The thing is, most companies don’t have homogeneous desktop estates. This is true in physical PCs today and will also be the case in their virtualized equivalents. Companies typically use combinations of delivery technologies, applications (corporate and non-corporate), client OS and devices to deliver an optimum, productive working experience to their employees. Based on extensive experience with many customers rolling out desktop virtualization projects, we know that successful (i.e. low-cost, high adoption) virtual desktops require the ability to automatically deliver non-persisted, leveraged corporate OS and apps on-demand from a centralized source. To this fresh, clean desktop session must then be added the independently-managed user environment as described above – note this must be added selectively in response to user actions. We are well beyond profile management now!
Adding RTO Virtual Profiles into the View offering will certainly enable VMware’s customer base to start to roll-out Windows XP based virtual desktops (Windows Vista & Windows 7 will be supported in future releases) in a controlled way, while providing some personalization capabilities. As these implementations start to grow, the need for a more comprehensive treatment of the user environment will become essential.
User personalization is an exciting and rapidly-growing space! We’re working closely with VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and our joint customers to ensure successful and viable virtual desktop roll-outs …..we look forward to seeing this vital part of the new desktop paradigm grow in importance over the coming months and years!
Pete Rawlinson
VP WW Marketing, AppSense
Live from VMworld 2009 – A press release shows that VMware are to OEM the RTO Virtual Profiles Product into VMware View. Press Release can be found here
2 Comments | CAL, Citrix, CTP, Edgesight, general, Group Policy, Laptop, Licensing, Microsoft, Mobile Device, Per Device, roaming profiles, rto, rumor, rumour, Sepago, Streaming, TS, user environment management, User Profile Manager, VDI, virtual profiles, VMware, VMworld, XenApp, XenApp 5, XenDesktop | Tagged: AppSense, Citrix, Corruption, Desktop Virtualization, Environment Manager, Last Write Wins, Lockdown, Logon Scripts, Logon Times, Microsoft, NTUser.DAT, Personality, Personalization, Profile, profiles, Registry keys, Registry Settings, roaming profiles, rto, RTO Virtual Profiles, Sepago, SepagoPROFILE, Software Restriction, UEM, user environment management, VDI, View, virtual profiles, VMware, VMworld, Xen, XenApp, XenDesktop | Permalink
Posted by peterjr11
August 31, 2009
Sumit Dhawan over in the Citrix XenDeskop group has posted a very interesting article in the run up to VMworld 09. I’m also hearing some interesting rumors about activity in user personalization space. Sumit makes some very important points….which are all based on actual customer implementations.
I’m also over in San Francisco attending VMworld this week and no doubt will hear about lots of upcoming companies and technologies, aiming to address the challenges of virtualized desktop management. It’s great we have so many brains fixed on these issues now, but remember it’s all about what can actually be implemented in a customer environment. We have to be pragmatic. Through working with a substantial stable of customers, we know there is a right way to address the challenges of user personalization in desktop estates, and agree with the points Sumit makes in his blog. Looking forward to more dialog on this!
Pete Rawlinson
VP WW Marketing, AppSense
Here is a quick excerpt from Sumit’s blog post along with link:
‘On the run up to VMworld 2009, there seems to be an increasing amount of activity on the subject of user personalization in VDI. Even Gartner has written about dynamic workspace, which has user personalization as a key element of the stack. What does this mean? What is user personalization all about? And, where does it need to be? Let’s take a closer look…….’
The full post can be found here.
1 Comment | Citrix, CTP, Edgesight, gartner, roaming profiles, rumor, rumour, Sepago, Streaming, TS, user environment management, User Profile Manager, VDI, VMware, VMworld, XenApp, XenApp 5, XenDesktop | Tagged: AppSense, Citrix, customers, Desktop Virtualization, Environment Manager, gartner, Personality, Personalization, Policies, Profile, profiles, Registry keys, Registry Settings, ROI, Rollback, SBC, UEM, user environment management, VDI, VMware, VMworld, XenApp, XenDesktop | Permalink
Posted by peterjr11
August 28, 2009
This is the fifth installment in a series of posts about the new features and options in AppSense Version 8 Service Pack 2. (If you have not yet downloaded this latest release, you can read more info and download it from here )
AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 introduces a new condition – Run Once.
When the Run Once condition is utilized on a specific trigger, the condition ensures that any child actions or conditions only run once during that logged on session.
This condition is available only from trigger nodes that run more than once per session, and therefore excludes the following:
- Computer | Startup
- Computer | Shutdown
- User | Logon
- User | Logoff
Each Run Once condition uses its own unique internal variable to monitor when the condition is satisfied. This enables any number of conditions to be utilized but only once within the current session. So, for example, you could pop up a ‘maintenance’ warning message only the first time a specific application is launched within that session.
Tip It is possible to change the Run Once condition to become a ‘Run More than Once’ condition by editing an existing Run Once condition and selecting ‘Ctrl‐Alt‐Right Click’ in the dialog to bring up a new counter spin control. Altering the counter value from ‘1’ to the desired number will change the action to a ‘Run More than Once’ action.
P:S
As this is an ever growing blog topic, the previous posts on the other new features we have detailed can be found below:
NEW FEATURE No. 1 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Run As
NEW FEATURE No. 2 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Connect As
NEW FEATURE No. 3 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Improved compression and data handling protocol
NEW FEATURE No. 4 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Manipulation of files in Personalization Analysis
NEW FEATURE No. 5 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Run Once
NEW FEATURE No. 6 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Group SID Refresh
NEW FEATURE No. 7 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Trigger Action Time Audit Event
NEW FEATURE No. 8 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Stop If Fails
NEW FEATURE No. 9 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – New Application Categories in the User Interface
NEW FEATURE No. 10 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Refresh
NEW FEATURE No. 11 – AppSense Environment Manager 8.0 Service Pack 2 – Registry Hive Exclusions
7 Comments | general, Group Policy, user environment management | Tagged: AppSense, Environment Manager, Logon Scripts, Personality, Policies, Profile, profiles, Registry keys, Registry Settings, UEM, user environment management | Permalink
Posted by Oliver Sills
August 27, 2009
7 Comments | Citrix, general, Mobile Device, TS, user environment management, VDI, VMware | Tagged: AppSense, Citrix, Corruption, Desktop Virtualization, Environment Manager, Last Write Wins, Logon Scripts, Logon Times, Personality, Personalization, Policies, Profile, profiles, Registry keys, Registry Settings, Rollback, UEM, user environment management, VDI, View, VMware, XenApp, XenDesktop | Permalink
Posted by Oliver Sills
