During the webcast, we’ll talk about the enterprise vision for Windows 10, as well as new features and enhancements coming in the UI, new security and identity features, new management and Windows Store capabilities, and deployment enhancements. We’ll also have live Q&A during the entire event to address any questions you may have about Windows 10 in the enterprise.

If you can’t attend live, recordings will be available on the Microsoft Virtual Academy website after the event too. And be sure to also check out the Windows 10 security, management, and deployment session recordings from TechEd Europe that are available on the Channel 9 website.

We also want to pass along the reminder that the 120-day window as we communicated previously for enterprise customers to get updated to the Windows 8.1 Update has passed. In order to receive the latest security and non-security updates for Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 you will need to deploy the Windows 8.1 Update (KB2919355).

UPDATE September 2nd: On August 15th, as soon as we became aware of a small number of customers experiencing problems with the August 2014 update rollup for Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, and Windows Server 2012 R2 (KB2975719), we immediately investigated and pulled the problematic update making it unavailable to download. Today, we are re-releasing this update with fixes for these known issues.

Customers who have already installed the original update that was released on August 12, 2014, and who may have experienced an issue, can read this KB article that details instructions on how to resolve the issue before the new updates will install automatically. Customers with Windows Updates enabled, and who have selected to receive optional updates automatically, do not need to take any action.

Customers who have not selected to receive optional updates automatically, will need to go to Windows Update to install it.

WHAT ARE WINDOWS APPORTALS?

A Windows Apportal is a Windows 8.1 app that can integrate your entire Line of Business (LOB) stack into a single, modern, touch-based experience. The concept behind Apportals is simple – introduce the same nested folder structure common in a desktop OS to the modern mobile OS. The result is a UI experience that allows the user to drill from the Start screen (composed of Live Tiles) to another mini-Start screen (composed of Grid Tiles). And best of all, because an Apportal is built out of the OS, everything that runs on Windows runs in a Windows Apportal, including Desktop Windows 7 Applications; Modern Windows 8 Apps; and Web Applications.

WHY WINDOWS APPORTALS?

Windows Apportals address a long-missed insight in enterprise sales: customers use software from many vendors. Windows Apportals were built in response to numerous requests to create an “on-the-glass” integration for the wide variety of heterogeneous LOB apps that exist in organizations today, including legacy Windows 7 Desktop Applications; newer Modern Windows 8 apps; and Web Applications. IT Pros within enterprises  know that the wide variety of apps, applications, and services which exist in an organization require a loosely-coupled structure – and in today’s diverse organizational environments it is not realistic or desirable to build a single, monolithic application. Instead, organizations want to use the flexibility of the Windows 8.1 OS to create a UI-based virtual integration, and continue to gain value from existing legacy technology investments. Windows Apportals are the solution to this need.

USER CUSTOMIZATION WITH ACTIVE DIRECTORY

Active Directory (AD) plays an important role in Windows Apportals by providing role-based access to both the Grid Tiles and the back-end data sources. Specifically, AD is a directory service that Microsoft developed for Windows domain networks and which is included in Azure and Windows Server. With AD, a domain controller authenticates and authorizes all users and computers in a Windows domain type network – assigning and enforcing security policies for all computers and installing or updating software. For example, when a user logs into a computer that is part of a Windows domain, Active Directory checks the submitted password and determines whether the user is a system administrator or normal user. With a Windows Apportal, the AD settings determine the specific data and Grid Tiles to which a user is entitled. This provides a high-level of customization, and is particularly helpful in environments where there is a high-level of data customization required by user – such as sales organizations, healthcare organizations, and distributed enterprises. As a result, a single Windows Apportal app can filter, share, and display data and functionality based on job role, organization, industry, and even geography – thereby enabling users to stay focused on the specific tools and information they need to do their job.

“Customers get excited when they see Windows Apportals, they say it’s the future”, said Martin Wolfram, President, Inviso. “As a Microsoft partner, we are very customer focused. This new innovation has given us the opportunity to work with our customers to understand a broader set of their business needs, and then customize and deliver end-to-end services that meet those needs. The design and architecture lend themselves to easy re-use of code, which makes Windows Apportals an incredibly profitable line of business for us. Customers  see a lot of value in Apportals, so for us, Windows Apportals are game changer.”

For partners attending WPC 2014, register to attend the Windows Apportal session for a Windows Apportal demo.

Grad Conn, CMO Lead, Microsoft U.S.

Every page of the TechNet library has a link up at the top-right of the page that reads “Export.”  Click it and you’ll go here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/export/help. This page explains how to build your own pdf or html document (.mht) from topics you select in the library.  That’s right, you roll up the content you want and download it. 

Click the “Start” button and you’ll be taken back to the page you arrived from – the assumption being that’s a topic you want to export.  From there you can select all the topics you want to include in your personalized downloadable file.  Note there is a functional ceiling to the number of pages you can export at 200 topics. 

Save your new doc set to any device and you’ll have it when you need it.  It’s that simple!

Nathan Barnett, Technical Writer, Microsoft Corporation

As a critical component of Microsoft’s Desktop virtualization story, UE-V is an on premise solution that captures and centralizes application and Windows settings for the user. This enables users to change devices without reconfiguring their applications or settings. UE-V focuses on providing a personal and flexible experience for the end user while being simple and versatile for the IT Pro to configure what applications should have their settings roam, and be easily integrated and scalable through your existing tools and infrastructure. UE-V 2.1 continues to deliver on these focus area through:

1. Support for Microsoft Office 2013 shipped with the UE-V Agent, which enables you to personalize >1500 Office 2013 settings across your devices.
2. Support for More Windows 8/Windows 8.1 settings and Windows 7 Credential Manager & certificate settings.
3. Empowering your Users to continue to enjoy the Windows store and app experience while synchronizing OS and Windows Store settings via UE-V.
4. Empowering you to control settings that are backed up vs synchronized across devices. These backed up settings can then be automatically or manually be restored to a user’s device.

Let’s now go into some more detail on features supported in this latest beta release of UE-V.

Office 2013 support

UE-V 2.1 now includes the Microsoft Office 2013 settings location template. It also includes improved Outlook signature support, by adding enhanced synchronization of signature settings for new, reply, and forwarded emails.

UE-V 2.1 seamlessly integrates with Office 365, including ensuring if settings are already roamed by Office 365 then they do not get roamed by UE-V. For more information, see “Overview of user and roaming settings for Office 2013” (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=391220). If you prefer to enable full Office 365 settings synchronization using UE-V 2.1, do one of the following:

• Use Group Policy to disable Office 365 synchronization
• Do not enable the Office 365 synchronization experience during Office 2013 installation.

UE-V 2.1 ships with Office 2013 and Office 2010 templates. This release removes the Office 2007 templates. Users can still use Office 2007 templates from UE-V 2.0 or earlier.

Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 settings support

UE-V 2.1 provides the ability to synchronize credentials and certificates stored in the Windows Credential Manager. Enabling this component helps users keep their domain credentials and certificates in sync. Users can sign in one time on a device, and these credentials will roam for that user across all of their UE-V enabled devices.

Windows Store and app experience while synchronizing via UE-V

In UE-V 2.0 if a user had linked their Microsoft Account (MSA) on a Windows 8+ machine, then UE-V would not synchronize settings. We received feedback from our customers that they wanted to use UE-V to synchronize their MSA enabled applications like Microsoft Store apps settings with UE-V. We have responded to this feedback in UE-V 2.1, by allowing customers to use Group Policy to turn off MSA Sync and use UE-V instead as follows:

Open GPEdit and enable “Computer ConfigurationAdministrative TemplatesWindows ComponentsSync your settingsDo not sync” Group Policy.

Alternatively, Users who manually turn off the OneDrive Sync in the modern Control Panel and have UE-V installed, then UE-V will automatically synchronize OS and Windows 8 enabled Apps.

Backup/Restore support

We also received requests from our customers to enhance the backup and restore capabilities of UE-V. We have addressed these requests by allowing IT administrators to restore additional settings when a user adopts a new device. Administrators can put a settings location template in a “backup” or “roam (default)” profile using the Set-UevTemplateProfile PowerShell cmdlet. This enables computer settings in addition to user settings sync to the new computer. Templates assigned to the backup profile are backed up for that device and configured on a per-device basis.

Conclusion

With UE-V 2.1 beta we are continuing to innovate ensuring that you experience increased personalization, flexibility and management of your OS and application settings, on any physical or virtualized device. When completed, UE-V 2.1 will ship as part of a future version of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

I encourage you to review these betas in your own organization and let us know what you think in the comments.  To learn more about MDOP, make sure to visit the MDOP Zone on the Springboard Series on TechNet.

Ronald Dockery, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Windows Commercial

Many of you remember Stephen Rose as the previous owner of the Springboard Series. In addition to sharing his thoughts via this blog, he also led a series of Springboard Series Tours across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and South America. I had a chance to catch up with Stephen and ask about his latest project, which we first announced in the May issue of the Springboard Series Insider.

“I’m excited to announce our Windows Unplugged Tour. Windows Unplugged is similar to the Springboard Series Tours we did in the past, but scaled down since it’s just me who will be presenting. I’ll be walking IT pros through the latest Windows and Windows Phone features, the newest devices, and Windows management tools. I’ll be encouraging the audience to drive the discussions and I will take everyone’s feedback back to Redmond. I’ll also have lots of demos so it will be a great event.”

“There will be five Windows Unplugged events in the U.S.: Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Chicago. I am hoping to visit a few more cities at a later date. We will feed and water everyone as well as give away some software, gift cards, and a maybe even a few cool Windows 8.1 devices. If folks want to attend, just check out the registration info is below. We only have space for around 150 people per event so folks should sign up quickly.”

To celebrate  all of the great support we have received over the past year from IT pros, we are happy to announce the registration information for the Springboard Series Windows IT Pro Community Party at TechEd North America*. The party is open to any attendees of TechEd North America in Houston. Since there are only 300 tickets available, don’t delay. Last year’s party sold out in only 30 minutes!

The pass will be distributed onsite at the Windows Information Counter in the Microsoft Solutions Experience. You must bring your confirmation acceptance email to the booth and photo ID to receive your party pass and lanyard. No exceptions.

Save the date!
Date: Wednesday, May 14th
Time: 7:00 – 11:00 pm CDT
Location: Hughes Hangar – 2811 Washington Avenue, Houston, TX

*Please be aware that the registration link above is for the TechEd North America event only.

For those of you who are not familiar with App-V, this product enables anywhere access to virtualized applications on any authorized PC without application installs. Microsoft’s has a long history of providing flexible application virtualization with powerful management, and making the virtual application behave as if it was locally installed.

Today’s update to App-V 5.0 SP2 is available for download and includes a number of significant product innovations focusing on virtualized desktop scenarios. We have also published new guidance on tuning and sizing your virtualized application infrastructure along with detailed descriptions of the App-V client internals.

Below is a summary of the updates to App-V 5.0 SP2:

• Innovations to application publishing and launch. App-V now has a number of enhancements to application publishing/refresh and launch performance. These include new capabilities that leverage existing user profile management technology (like MDOP’s UE-V) during application publish and launch.
• Support of parallel deployment and execution of application upgrades. Improvements to App-V, allowing you to simplify the test and execution of your upgraded virtualized applications while retaining user access to the original virtualized application running on the same device.
• Improvements to existing capabilities. Based on your feedback, we have also made a number of other updates to App-V, including: enhancements to the package conversion engine and sequencer, improving package conversion rates; and, support for a VFS write mode sequencer setting – which simplifies the virtualization of applications that require this capability.
• More deployment guidance and how-to guides. To help you learn, test, deploy and optimize App-V in your environment, there are now a number of how-to guides available here. These include a new App-V performance guide, a publishing guide and updates to our administration and sequencing guides.

In summary App-V 5.0 SP2 Spring update includes some great new capabilities for one of MDOPs headline products and represents another instance of how MDOP delivers new innovation and easily deployable solutions at a fast and predictable cadence. To learn more about MDOP, including App-V – plus helpful guidance on how you can deploy these tools in your organization – please visit our TechNet site.

Ronald Dockery, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Windows Commercial

MBAM 2.0, which was released about a year ago, represented the break through release for the product, and we’ve seen tremendous adoption within organizations of all shapes and sizes including Siemens, BT, General Mills, and Yes Prep Public Schools just to name a few. It’s inclusion of the following features made broad adoption and appeal possible:

• Self-Service Portal: The Self-Service Portal helps end users recover devices (e.g.: lost PIN) without the need of help desk assistance
• System Center Configuration Manager Integration: Integration with System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2007 and 2012 enables organizations to integrate MBAM’s compliance management and reporting capabilities within your existing ConfigMgr infrastructure.
• Windows 8 Support: Support for managing BitLocker on Windows 8 and Windows to Go devices has been included along with the ability to take advantage of new Windows PE capabilities that dramatically reduce encryption times.

With the 2.0 release there seems to be consensus amongst customers that MBAM addresses the vast majority of their key requirements, however with that said there were a number of improvements that many customers were still waiting for us to prioritize. These included:

• Support for Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS 140-2)
• Improved compliance and enforcement policies
• Support for enterprise scenarios and topologies

Support for Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS 140-2)

While BitLocker has a long history of FIPS support MBAM has not supported managing devices in this configuration. MBAM 2.5 changes that by adding support for the two most popular FIPS configuration options for BitLocker. The first option is with the Data Recovery Agent (DRA) protector option which uses a public key infrastructure (PKI) certificate to protect and recover volumes. This option is supported for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 devices. The second option is specific to Windows 8.1 where the Windows team updated the Recovery Key Password protector to be FIPS compliant. The challenge in previous version of Windows was that the Recovery Key Password was generated using a non-FIPS compliant algorithm and in Windows 8.1 that was updated. This change makes achieving FIPS compliance in Windows 8.1 devices simple to provision and support.

Improved compliance and enforcement policies

MBAM 2.0 was effective at driving high levels of compliance when IT provisioned BitLocker encryption during the imaging process however when unencrypted devices appeared on the network IT’s ability to enforce and move devices into a compliant state was somewhat limited. The challenge was that IT lacked the ability to initiate the encryption process and users had the ability to postpone the encryption process to a later date.

To address this limitation in MBAM 2.5 we’ve included a grace period option that enables IT to define the amount of time that a user has to initiate the encryption process before MBAM will automatically enforce it. If the policy requires TPM-only protection the process will automatically initiate and run in the background, and since the process run as a low priority thread the user very likely won’t notice any performance degradation. If policy requires TPM + PIN protection the encryption process will initiate once the user completes the MBAM client wizard which will require them to provide a PIN before resuming their work. Organizations now also have the ability to prevent postponement of encryption.

Another feature customers had asked about was regarding the ability for users to create easily guessable BitLocker PIN’s. The MBAM 2.5 client now inherently prevents the use of PIN’s composed of sequenced or repetitive values like: 123456, 654321, 456789, 222111, etc. This capability is also supported for Enhanced PIN’s where alpha, numeric, and symbols can be used.

Support for enterprise scenarios and topologies

While MBAM has been deployed in some of the world’s largest and most complex environments there were some topologies and configurations that MBAM 2.5 didn’t support, at least ideally. The first was related to organizations that consisted of multiple forests. To support this type of network topology in MBAM 2.0 required separate MBAM infrastructures within each forest. In MBAM 2.5 we support the use of fully qualified domain names (FQDN) and a single MBAM infrastructure managing clients across two or more trusted forests.

In addition to cross forest support MBAM 2.5 now supports high availability configurations on Windows Server, IIS, and SQL Server. MBAM supports load balancing of its web components using software or hardware based load balancers and its databases can now be deployed to SQL Server failover clusters.

In the end MBAM 2.5 includes something for everyone and it addresses some of the top customer requests that we’ve received over the last year. It even ships with the localized versions on day one so customers no longer have to wait ~6 months for non-English builds! If you’re already running MBAM 1.0 or 2.0 in your environment moving to 2.5 is an easy transition that will provide many new benefits. If you’re not using BitLocker or MBAM today now is the perfect time to start evaluating it for your organization. To learn more about MBAM 2.5 please refer to the product documentation on TechNet.

Chris Hallum, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Windows Commercial

The demos that Johan and Mikael presented during the Jump Start are now available via TechNet Virtual labs for you to try for yourself. The labs cover the following topics:

• Creating a Windows 8.1 reference image
• Deploying Windows 8.1 with MDT 2013
• Deploying Windows 8.1 with Configuration Manager 2012 R2 and MDT 2013

We hope that you enjoy trying out these labs yourself as you watch the Windows 8.1 deployment Jump Start.