How to: Save Windows tiles in Windows 8.1 using RES Workspace Manager 2014

Whitin Windiws 8.1 users are able to add there own Windows tiles on the start screen. Here you can create your own selection of the most used applications and group them together. When you’re usning Windows 8.1 with RES Workspace Manager 2014, you can save this layout. So after logout and login again, the layout is still there.

1.) Open the RES Workspace Manager 2014 Console
2.) Navigate to Compsotion \ User Settings
3.) Create a new setting named: Save Windows Tiles
4.) Add the following two files to be saved
%LoacalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms
%LoacalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\appsFolder.itemdata-ms.bak
5.) Assign the settings to the right user(s) and Workspace
6.) Login, change your Windows tiles and logout….
7.) Browse to your PersonalSettings folder and see if there is any UPF file

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Can’t start Sticky Notes in Windows 8.1 with RES Workspace Manager 2014

Last week I’ve been working on a big VDI environment with RES Workspace Manager 2014, Windows 8 and VMWare Horizon View. Everything looks realy nice and is working realy well!! But I’ve seen one strange thing. One of the applications “Sticky Notes” couldn’t be started from the start menu or Windows tiles. In this blogpost you’ll find a solution for this problem.

1.) Add Sticky Notes to RES Workspace Manager 2014
2.) Open the Properties of the new application and navigate to the second tab “Settings
3.) Scroll down to “Disable file system redirector on 64-bit systems” and Enable this setting
4.) Refresh the User Workspace and start the application again
5.) Sticky Notes can now be used

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How to: Set Microsoft Office initials with Active Directory information using RES Workspace Manager 2014

When you’ve installed Microsoft Office in your environment, the first time the user starts one of the Office products, they receive a pop-up box for the initials. Default there are two things the user has to fill in. The username and the initials. The username is the displayname within Active Directory. The initials is the first letter of the username. But, what if you want to fill this field also with some Active Directory information, like the property Initials.

In this environment I’m using RES Workspace Manager 2014, so there’re also possibilities to set some user variables in your session. First I’ve created a new environment variable with a query to read the information from Active Directory.

1.) Open the RES Workspace Manager Console and create a new environment variable. In my example it is Initials
2.) Give the new variable the following value $adinfo(Initials) There’re some more values possible, like firstname, lastname, etc….
3.) Login to your session, in my example a Windows 8.1 VDI desktop and open the command prompt
4.) Type the command set and search for the new variable Initials. It’s the information from the Active Directory
5.) Now return to the RES Workspace Manager Console and create a new User Setting (User Registry)
6.) The values are stored in the following registrykey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Common\Userinfo
7.) Add this path in the new registry setting and create two new REG_SZ keys
UserInitials with the value %Initials%
Username
with the value %Username%
8.) Configure the Access Control and the Workspace Container
9.) Login again into a new session and start Microsoft Office, for example Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc…
10.) Open the options and take a look at the user initials.

This is a realy powerfull solution to control your users initials. You can choose to apply the User Registry settings once, so the users are able to edit the initials. You can use a User Preference to store this information in a .UPR (User Preference) with RES Workspace Manager.

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