Cloudy With a Chance of Apps

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Introduction

A new feature for Windows 365, and now in preview, is Windows 365 Cloud Apps. Instead of giving users a full remote desktop session, Windows 365 Cloud Apps are published as individual applications that run on a Cloud PC but look and behave like they are installed locally on the device. If you are familiar with Remote Apps, first introduced in Windows Server 2008 as part of Remote Desktop Services, then you will have an understand of how these operate. When Windows 365 Cloud Apps are published, you will be able to load up that individual application and if any interaction with another application is required, then that application will also fire up, even if it has not been published to the user.

Note that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are only available to you with a Windows 365 Frontline subscription.

myself and my good friend Paul Winstanley sat down to test run this new Windows 365 feature. It is nice and simple to set up so follow along.

Create the Windows 365 Cloud Apps Provisioning Policy

The first step is to create a provisioning policy for the Windows 365 Cloud Apps. This is done in the usual place for Windows 365 provisioning Devices | Device onboarding | Windows 365 | Provisioning Policies | Create Policy.

You will notice a new Experience section in the policy wizard, here you will need to select Access only apps which run on a Cloud PC (preview) as the selection defaults to Access a full Cloud PC desktop. When you select the Access only apps which run on a Cloud PC (preview) option, Frontline will be automatically selected for License type and Frontline type will be Shared. All other options are greyed out as they are not applicable to Windows 365 Cloud Apps as mentioned earlier.

Enter any other relevant information for join type, geography, region and SSO before proceeding through the wizard.

The selection of the Image type is crucial for Windows 365 Cloud Apps as the solution will make available any discoverable applications in the devices’ start menu (Appx and MSIX are currently not supported discoverable app type – therefore Teams is not available at this stage). You can import a custom image to take advantage of other applications which are not included in the Microsoft Gallery images.

Clicking the View link for Apps available on the image will display a list of the Cloud Apps that will be available to you when the device is provisioned.

When assigning the policy, you will need to select the Frontline Cloud PC size from your Available Cloud PC’s drop down and create an Assignment name and choose the Number of Cloud PC’s, this number will reflect the number of licenses that you have available to use.

After creating your policy, the Frontline Shared device, which will host the Cloud Apps will being provisioning. You can view this under All Cloud PCs.

Give the device some time to provision and once completed it will report as such.

 

Publishing some Cloud Apps

Whilst clicking though the menu system, you may have noticed a new All Cloud Apps option, this is where we need to go to publish the discovered apps, making them available to the assigned users.

We can see that 32 items were discovered from the image we selected and their App status is currently set to Ready to publish.

Simply select the apps you want to publish and click Publish.

Confirm your choice to Publish the apps.

The App status will change to Publishing.

and will, very quickly, become Published.

You now have the option to Unpublish apps. The process is identical. Select apps you want to remove and click Unpublish.

Confirm to remove them.

The App status will revert to Ready to publish.

How to access the Windows 365 Cloud Apps

Windows App is the place to go to access your Windows 365 Cloud Apps. Prior to publishing apps to the users, the application will display any device based Cloud PCs the user has access to.

With apps assigned a new option Apps appears. Look out for it as it’s a subtle addition and you could miss it initially.

Clicking on Apps will display the published apps that you have made available.

You can make an app a Favorite by clicking the ellipses.

When launching an app a RemoteApp connection to the Frontline device will initiate and you may be prompted to authenticate along the way.

and Allow remote desktop connection, depending on policies assigned to you.

If this is the first time connecting to the Cloud App, it will take a little long to load up. You can click Configuring remote session to see that Windows is being prepared.

You can identify the Cloud App from the icon on the Windows task bar, there is a Windows App logo on the top right hand corner of the icon.

Once launched, you will feel as it the application is running on locally on your device. Pretty cool!

Things to note

• To remove Cloud Apps from the All Cloud Apps view, you will need to delete the assignment of the provisioning policy.
• Since Cloud Apps run as Frontline Shared, the management of them is identical to management of a Frontline Shared Cloud PC, so be aware of any max connection limitations due to licencing.
• You can utilise policies assigned to Frontline devices, such as redirection. These will apply to Cloud Apps.
• When using a custom image, Windows 365 Cloud Apps will use a PowerShell script to scan the Start Menu for apps, so ensure that your tenant policies do not require extra authentication for PowerShell scripts to achieve this.
• Currently only apps discovered in the Start Menu are available. Microsoft are developing the ability to publish apps that are installed by Intune and are included in the Autopilot Device Preparation Policy associated with the Cloud App provisioning policy.

We hope this blog post gives you a tester of this great new feaure.