Description
Remote Desktop Manager has an excellent support for running under a Remote Desktop Services environment. A master configuration file can be created to distribute settings for all new users of the system or even to update existing user's configuration.
Each user must have a unique application data folder [Roaming profiles or similar technologies]. Remote Desktop Manager saves some user preferences to the local configuration file. The folder can be wiped out whenever the user logs out of the Windows Session, but it must be accessible for the duration of Remote Desktop Manager execution. |
The Devolutions Web Login [DWL] was created for a normal desktop environment. It uses Inter-process communication [IPC] with the client application. Using it on a remote desktop server introduces a level of risk that may be unacceptable for corporate users. Safe usage of DWL requires a manual configuration of both RDM and DWL on each user profiles. For more information about the subject visit our Secure Devolutions Web Login topic. |
Procedure
1.Install by following the procedure For All Users. This ensures that the Microsoft Installer Database does contain all of the needed information for all user profiles of the host.
2.After installing Remote Desktop Manager, configure your preferences. We recommend going through all the configuration options to find the set of options that you wish to distribute. The data sources deserve special interest since it is much better when they are configured by an administrator. You may even take the opportunity to lock the data sources to protect against any modification by the users. Please refer to Lock Data Source for more information.
When using Advanced Data Sources, for effective logging methods, proper session security and user-based features, it is CRITICAL that each user has their own account to authenticate against the data source. Redistributing a data source registration should follow one of the patterns below: oThe data source is configured to always ask the username and password; oYou are using integrated security against SQL Server; oYou use environment variables for the username, and require the password. |
Do not check the options to include Devolutions Account Credentials as well as any data source that contains saved credentials while also enabling Include data source credentials. |
3.When running Remote Desktop Manager under a Remote Desktop Services environment, we may have to tweak the parameters of the RDP entries to use less resources as possible and improve the startup performance of the application.
a.To improve the Remote Desktop Manager startup performance, please see Solution #3 of the Startup Performance article.
b.To limit the memory consumption of RDP entries, please see Memory Tuning of RDP Sessions.
5.Move the default.cfg file in the installation folder of Remote Desktop Manager, if you have used the default installation settings, it is under %ProgramFiles[x86]%\Devolutions\RemoteDesktopManager.
Workflow
New users
Whenever a new user creates a profile on the system, Remote Desktop Manager detects the presence of the default.cfg file and uses it as a template to create the user's configuration file.
Existing users
A group policy exists to force the new configurations to be accepted automatically. Please see the How to Apply Policies article to know how to deploy the Force the loading of the default.cfg file parameter. |
If the user chooses to ignore the new configuration file when presented with the dialog below, he will not be presented with the choice until the date/time of the default.cfg file has changed. |
Whenever Remote Desktop Manager is started and it detects a new default.cfg file, the following dialog will appear:
New default.cfg detected
By selecting Use New Configuration [Lose Mine], the user's configuration is simply overwritten. If you only wish to update the Remote Desktop Manager license key after a renewal, choose Retrieve New Registration Only.