As you might have read on the Windows for Your Business blog,  today Karri Alexion-Tiernan announced that the User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) Release Candidate (RC) is available for download. UE-V, which was first announced in April, will be included in MDOP and gives users a consistent and personal Windows experience by allowing them to change their device and keep their experience. With UE-V it doesn’t matter if they are using a locally installed desktop or a desktop hosted in the datacenter using VDI, a physically installed or virtually deployed application.

The UE-V RC provides performance improvements such as the ability to process settings packages concurrently. This helps your settings get applied quicker and speeds up application launch. There are also refinements to some of the settings locations templates for Office 2010, making them more accurate in which files and registry keys to roam. For example, the new templates will capture the position and size of the Office application windows on the desktop. These updated Office templates also fixed some settings that were not roaming, such as if the page navigation check box in Microsoft Publisher. We also included support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 RTM, since we know some of you have downloaded it from the Volume License Service Center (VLSC), TechNet Professional Subscription, or MSDN Subscription, or are using the 90 day evaluation. The UE-V RC also includes a few new features that we heard you wanted based on conversations at TechEd North America and Europe, and submissions to the Connect feedback page.

One of the new features I want to highlight is the ability to manage synchronization using security groups. While there are a lot of scenarios where you want the user’s experience to roam (using a VDI desktop when you travel to another office, getting a new desktop as part of your PC refresh cycle, etc.), you told us that there are a few scenarios where you don’t want a user to roam their settings. For example, let’s say you have a set of users who use mandatory profiles but occasionally there are other users who use the same machines that need to have their experience roam with UE-V. To do this with UE-V beta 2, it was very difficult and required the creation of two different group policy objects to enable. We heard your request that UE-V should be easier to control on a per-user basis to enable scenarios like this. Therefore, we created a new group policy to enable or disable UE-V. This policy allows you to use security groups to control who it applies to, ultimately giving you control over which users have the ability to roam their experience. Below is a screenshot of the new policy.

We also enabled you to control the synchronization via PowerShell and at install time via command line parameters. The PowerShell cmdlet gives you another option if you choose not to use group policy, or if you just want a quick way to configure one off machines. To disable UE-V for the current user on the machine, the cmdlet you can use is:

Set-UevConfiguration –CurrentComputerUser –DisableSync

You can also use the following cmdlet to disable UE-V for all users on the computer:

Set-UevConfiguration –Computer –DisableSync

If on install you want to disable UE-V, which comes in handy if you want to only control enabling UE-V in your organization via Group Policy, provide the switch:

SyncEnabled=False

In addition to this, there is good news for those of you who have been using the second beta of UE-V. With the UE-V RC there is no need to do a fresh install as you have the ability to do an in-place upgrade to the RC version. We did this to help you easily migrate to the UE-V RC. For those of you new to UE-V who want to learn more about it and how to deploy it, check out overview and deployment videos on the UE-V Springboard page.

We have also heard your request to know more as to when UE-V will be available. UE-V will be available for your production deployments in Q4 2012 as part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2012 release.

Thanks for joining us on the journey developing UE-V and providing feedback along the way. We really appreciate it and look forward to getting you the final version in the next few months.

Earlier this month, we announced that Windows 8 reached the RTM milestone. Today Windows 8 Enterprise is available to Software Assurance customers via the Volume License Service Center (VLSC), allowing you to test, pilot and begin adopting Windows 8 Enterprise within your organization.

For those customers who are interested in trying out the key features in Windows 8 Enterprise, you can also now obtain Windows 8 Enterprise through your TechNet Professional Subscription or MSDN Subscription. For those IT professionals that don’t have access through these other sources, a 90-day evaluation version is now available for download through the TechNet Evaluation Center. For more information about this evaluation version, please see the Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation FAQ.

For customers who will be deploying Windows 8 Enterprise, be assured that the KMS and MAK volume activation methods that were available with Windows 7 Enterprise are still there and work as they did before. But there is also a new Active Directory-based Activation method, offering a way to leverage your existing Active Directory infrastructure to simplify the activation process.

In order to use KMS or MAK activation, you will need to obtain new keys from the VLSC. If you are using a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer as your KMS host, you will also need to install a hotfix to enable Windows 8 Enterprise activation. For more information about volume activation, please see the Volume Activation Overview on TechNet.

To help with the planning, image engineering, and deployment processes for Windows 8 Enterprise, some key free tools are also now available for downloading:

• The Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK), which replaces the Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7, contains many key deployment tools that are essential for IT pros, including new versions of Windows PE and the User State Migration Tool. Tools that used to be available separately, such as the Application Compatibility Toolkit and the Windows Performance Toolkit, are now included in the ADK. Additionally, a new Windows Assessment Toolkit has been added to measure the performance, reliability and functionality of Windows in your lab environment. You can also access the Windows ADK online.
• The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 Update 1 (MDT) automates and accelerates the deployment of Windows 8 Enterprise by integrating all of the ADK tools into a single, easy-to-use deployment process. By leveraging MDT, you can easily create your own custom Windows 8 Enterprise images that can then be deployed throughout your enterprise.
• The Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit 7.0 can quickly and efficiently collect detailed infrastructure information you need for planning your migration to Windows 8 Enterprise. It includes detailed hardware and operating system information about each desktop, indicates which computers meet the hardware requirements for Windows 8 and also lists applications installed.

To find additional resources to help you plan for Windows 8 in your organization, bookmark the Springboard Series for Windows 8 and check out our step-by-step Plan for Windows 8 guide.

Thanks for your interest in Windows 8 Enterprise. Start your testing and evaluation today!

A few weeks ago at TechEd North America you might have heard that we announced that Beta 2 of User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) would be available by the end of the month. Fulfilling that commitment, I am happy to say that we are making it available today for you to download from http://www.microsoft.com/getuev.

For those of you who have not heard of UE-V before, let me give you a quick overview. UE-V allows you to change your device and keep your experience by providing you with a consistent and personal Windows experience. Regardless if you are using a rich desktop or a VDI session, a physically installed or virtually deployed application, UE-V will give you your unique experience that matches your work style. For additional background, check out the Springboard blog post I wrote back in April when we announced the first beta.

In Beta 1 we got a lot of feedback about what you like about the product and what you wanted added via the feedback section of the UE-V Connect site and at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), where we showed the product at the Desktop Virtualization booth and in a breakout session. We took that feedback to heart and this is helping us build a solution that best fits your needs, so please keep it coming.

What should you expect in the Beta 2 release? As with any beta, we found a few bugs that needed to be fixed so we took care of those, but we also spent some time on adding new features. The one that I am most excited about is the ability to roam operating system settings between Windows 7 and Windows 8. In Beta 1 we were able to roam operating system settings between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 which was great. But as many of you are starting to test Windows 8, we heard that you wanted to roam settings between Windows 7 and Windows 8 so you don’t have to reconfigure your operating system experience. Now with Beta 2, you can roam the relevant operating system settings between Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Another area of focus for Beta 2 was supporting more operating system settings. We have now added roaming of the Start menu, taskbar, folder options (like showing hidden files or extensions for known file types), and region/language settings, giving you a more complete operating system experience when roaming between devices. One thing to note is that roaming some of these operating system settings will affect login process. Due to how Windows is designed, there are some parts of operating system experience that can only be safely applied and synced at login and logoff.

We know that some of you are very sensitive to having anything that affects the login process no matter how minor that delay might be. In our testing, we have seen this to increase login times by less than one second, but you should always test this in your environment to see how this might affect your users. Understanding this concern, there is way to choose what parts of operating system experience you can roam. By default, these parts of the experience are not synced, but you can easily turn them on via Group Policy.

Some of you who used Beta 1 might be saying wait a minute, support for Group Policy? Yes, being able to easily manage UE-V and making sure that it can integrate and scale into your existing infrastructure is another high priority for us. In Beta 2, we have made available a Group Policy template to help you keep the UE-V agent’s configuration consistent across the organization.

The last new addition I will quickly call out is that on top of support for Internet Explorer 9 and 10 that we provided in Beta 1, we have added the ability to roam setting for Internet Explorer 8 and the ability to roam the home page setting and favorites between the three versions.

As you can see we have added even more value to UE-V and hope that you tryout UE-V Beta 2. If you used Beta 1 and move to the Beta 2, let me give you a few words of wisdom from my personal experience:

1. You will need to uninstall Beta 1, before going to Beta 2. There is no upgrade path.
2. Delete all the settings packages the Beta 1 UE-V agent created in the setting store and in c:\users\“username”\appdata\local\Microsoft\UEV. We made some updates to the settings package format and these will not work with Beta 2.
3. Make sure you register any additional settings location templates you created with UE-V Generator since the uninstall will unregister them. This can be easily done using the settings location catalog feature that allows the UE-V agent to check a network share for new, updated or removed settings location templates.
4. Before you create a settings location template, check out the UE-V Settings Location Template Gallery to see if someone already created it.

Thanks for the interest in UE-V. To learn more about the product, check out the UE-V Resource Zone on Springboard where we will be posting some new videos over the next few weeks and don’t forget to download the Beta 2 and provide feedback on the UE-V Connect page.

We’re just a couple days into TechEd North America in Orlando and already there’s a tremendous amount of excitement in the air, particularly around new information that we’re sharing about the enterprise capabilities of Windows 8. A few months ago, Erwin started the conversation around what Windows 8 means for businesses at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany, and followed-up later with a post on Windows 8 enterprise edition. Last week, he began talking about the business value of Windows 8 Release Preview and today followed up with more details in his “How Windows 8 Will Work for Your Business” post. In this post, Erwin discusses the great things that enterprises are already doing with the Windows 8 Consumer and Release Previews, as well as a series of updates to the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) suite.

MDOP helps IT Pros manage Windows features, virtualize applications and user experience, as well as restore productivity after a system issue. One of the biggest MDOP updates discussed at TechEd is to Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) 2.0, with the beta launching today. For this blog post, I’m going to do a deep dive into some of MBAM’s key features.

When MBAM 1.0 was released late last summer, our goal was to address the top three pain points customers experienced when attempting to manage and support BitLocker and BitLocker To Go on Windows 7. Customers asked us to simplify the provisioning process, provide compliance reporting and overall, help reduce the costs of supporting users with encrypted devices.

MBAM 1.0 was successful at addressing these top pain points, but as customers began using 1.0 we received some great feedback on how to make it even better. This feedback led us to examine the following priorities for MBAM 2.0:

Reduce overall customer costs by:

• Empowering end users to support themselves with a self-service recovery portal
• Taking advantage of Windows 8 functionality to reduce the time it takes to provision encryption to devices
• Help customers maintain compliance with improved enforcement capabilities
• Integrate MBAM with the tools that customers are already using

Reducing costs by creating self-service and faster provisioning tools

In MBAM 1.0, we helped reduce the costs of managing an encrypted environment by simplifying the process of provisioning BitLocker to devices, while also making it easier for IT help desks to assist users when they ran into trouble with an encrypted device. And with those scenarios addressed in 1.0, we asked ourselves: where could we further reduce costs? There were two big areas that we knew could greatly impact our customers in our next version of MBAM.

First, Windows 8 will help MBAM realize even greater results by reducing the time that it takes to provision BitLocker to devices. On traditional storage disks, BitLocker and MBAM can perform Used Disk Space Only Encryption, which means that rather than encrypting the entire disk, just the portions of the disk that contain data on them will be encrypted. This can reduce the time that it takes to provision encryption to a new device by many times.

However, we found that even with Used Disk Space Only Encryption, provisioning BitLocker can still take quite a bit of time. Windows 8 devices that are equipped with a new type of disk drive called an Encrypted Hard Drive can be provisioned with BitLocker protection within seconds, regardless of the disk size. In this case, Bitlocker offloads all of the encryption tasks to specialized hardware on the disk drive, while BitLocker will perform all of the key management functions. Essentially, Encrypted Hard Drives are effectively already encrypted from the moment they are turned on.

Another area where we can help drive down costs is with BitLocker recovery scenarios. Currently, when a user loses their PIN and goes into recovery mode, organizations have their user’s call the IT help desk to assist with the recovery process. With MBAM 2.0, we’re empowering the user to help themselves by equipping them with a self-service recovery portal that will walk them though the process. Here at Microsoft, we experience thousands of calls per year for recovery assistance and when you combine the cost of the call, plus the cost of lost productivity, were talking about a very large expense. With MBAM 2.0, we can help customers eliminate most of that burden.

Better maintaining and enforcing compliance

MBAM 1.0 helped organizations improve encryption policy compliance by providing them with two primary capabilities. First, we made it easier to encrypt new devices as part of the PC provisioning process. Second, we made it possible to encrypt PCs that were previously delivered to users in an unencrypted state. These capabilities were effective in driving increased compliance, but limited in their ability to maintain, force or prevent devices from drifting from the desired state.

To address this, in MBAM 2.0 we’re including the ability to automatically enforce encryption compliance for cases where users perpetually postpone encryption or when administrators decrypt or suspend protection. MBAM 2.0 will automatically bring the devices back to the desired state. Additionally, to protect machines during the pre-boot authentication process, we’re adding complex PIN support to address situations where users attempt to set a weak PIN. Common PIN sequences like 1111, 1234, and others like them can’t be used.

We also heard that more and more organizations are adopting the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) standard. This standard was supported with Windows 7 and BitLocker, but MBAM couldn’t manage machines using this configuration. MBAM 2.0 brings management support to devices configured in FIPS compliant mode.

Integrating with existing management infrastructure

Our strategy for MBAM 1.0 was to deliver a product that could scale to the largest size organizations, require the least amount of infrastructure, and could be run in any organization. The latter requirement consequently meant that MBAM could not take a dependency on System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), so management tasks – like compliance reporting of BitLocker protected devices – would need to occur in another console.

Our customers understood the rationale behind this strategy, but also expressed an expectation that SCCM integration should be on the product roadmap. In MBAM 2.0, we deliver on that expectation and have enabled MBAM management experiences, such as compliance reporting and hardware management, within the SCCM management console.

All of the additions mentioned above represent a significant set of improvements for MBAM and we’re really excited to deliver them to customers. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the beta and encourage you to download MBAM 2.0 from the MBAM site on Connect.

In addition to all the MBAM updates, there are some other announcements that I want to mention: the beta for Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) and the release candidate (RC) for the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) are available today and can both be downloaded from the AGPM and DART sites on Connect. Also, the new beta for User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) will be available at the end of the month and all will provide new functionality specific to Windows 8 Release Preview.

Please remember that we encourage your feedback to help make these products great. We encourage you to take the time to download and evaluate them as soon as possible and look forward to hearing from you and responding to your feedback on Connect. And for more information on MDOP, please visit www.microsoft.com/mdop.

UPDATE- 6/7/2012- Thank you for your interested but the event is now sold out.

Next week is the kickoff for TechEd 2012. We are first off very happy to share that TechEd US in Orlando ( June 11^th – June 14^th) is completely sold out and TechEd Europe in Amsterdam (June 26^th – 29^th) is not far behind.

To celebrate  all of the great support we have gotten over the past year from all of the IT pros, we are happy to announce the signup information for the Windows Community Party at TechEd US*. The party is open to any attendees of TechEd US in Orlando. Buses will be available to take you to and from the event from key conference hotels. Since there are only 400 tickets available, don’t delay. Last year’s party sold out in only 20 minutes!

The pass will be distributed onsite at the Windows Information Counter at the TLC. You must bring your confirmation acceptance email to the booth and photo ID to receive your party pass and lanyard.

Ready… Set… click here to register!

Save the Date!
Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Time: 7:00 – 11:00pm
Location: EMBER -42 West Central Blvd. -Orlando, FL 32801

*Please be aware that we will not be having an event in Amsterdam due to the event being shortened. The registration link above is for the US event only.