Introducing the DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant

Are you using DirectAccess or planning a deployment soon? Reduce your support costs and significantly improve your mobile users’ connectivity experience with the newly released Microsoft DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant (DCA).

DCA informs mobile users of their connectivity status at all times; provides tools to help them reconnect on their own if problems arise; and creates diagnostics to help mobile users provide IT staff with key information if necessary—all to help organizations operate with more efficiency, and at a lower cost.

DCA is the newest addition to the Windows® Optimized Desktop Toolkit 2010, which helps IT pros plan, deliver, and operate the right desktop technologies for users across their organizations.

DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant –Benefits

The DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant provides organizations with the following benefits:

· Lets mobile users know their connection status: DCA provides an indicator in the notification area that keeps mobile users informed of their connectivity status with an organization’s intranet.

· Reduces the number of support calls: DCA has built-in remediation tools that help mobile users solve connection problems on their own, without calling the help desk.

· Reduces the duration of support calls: If support is needed, DCA helps mobile users provide IT staff with key diagnostics to zero in on the source of a problem, so IT can resolve the issue faster and get users back to work.

· Helps users stay productive: Because DCA helps IT solve connection problems faster, mobile users have more reliable access to network-based resources, and can stay more productive.

Ask the Performance Team

Around the office, most of us are used to using UltraMon to manage our windows on the beautiful 23″ monitors we have.  Unfortunately, for the time being, UltraMon doesn’t provide support for 7, so some of us are left manually wrangling windows around.

In a rare moment of helpfulness, I managed to find some keyboard shortcuts to help.  One of the plus sides here, is that when using the shortcuts below, a window can be docked to the inside of your dual monitor setup (since you can’t do it with the mouse).

Win + Up Arrow
Maximizes the window.

Win + Down Arrow
Minimizes a restored window.  Restores a maximized window.

Win + Left Arrow
Docks the window to the left side of the screen.  If the window is already docked, restores.  If the window is docked to the right side of the screen, re-docks to the left side.

Win + Right Arrow
Docks the window to the right side of the screen.  If the window is already docked, restores.  If the window is docked to the left side of the screen, re-docks to the right side.

Tales from the Datacenter

1. Deploy the Windows 7 OS in an automated, repeatable pattern
2. Reduce the headache of application deployment by using a combination of Windows Application Virtualization (App-V) and Windows Presentation Virtualization (Terminal Services)
3. Create a new AD Structure so that we can change the way we deploy group policy
4. Use the new User Migration utility to migrate user settings while keeping the files local to the pc (no more copying to the network and back down when the image is complete)
5. Leave Citrix. The value add of Citrix has been reduced with each new Microsoft release as you get more and more of the functionality built-in to Windows.
6. Deploy DirectAccess on Server 2008 R2 to manage clients remotely and provide a consistent experience.
7. Deploy Forefront Sterling

So far, we are focusing our initial efforts around a consistent experience for IT Administrators, as this is our first test group. Here is the scenario I envision:

1. Our image administrator makes enhancements to the base image of the OS.
2. I boot my laptop (or desktop up) and the user migration tool runs and partitions a space for all of my local settings and files
3. The new image is put on the computer
4. The computer is joined to the domain
5. The computer uses group policy to configure OS Settings and Preferences, and deploy a minimum number of apps (I am mainly thinking infrastructure type apps here, like the App-V client of Forefront Client Security)
6. App-V is used to stream down any app that I might run while disconnected (Like Visio, or VLC Media Player)
7. All of my administrator consoles and applications are delivered as TS RemoteApps with icons on the Start Menu. Any app that would be useless to me when disconnected from the network (Like AD Users and Computers or Group Policy Manager) would be published as a seamless TS RemoteApp
8. One off software that I installed manually would need to be re-installed manually, but all of these setup files would already be on my computer because I would have migrated the installation source from the old pc.

Once we are happy with the IT Administrator First Install Experience and the IT Administrator Rebuild Experience, we will focus our efforts on the end user experiences.

Windows 7 Build 7057 — Windows 7, Build 7057, as numerous sites and blogs have reported — is out in the wild.  I’ve seen a number of folks speculating this build could end up being earmarked as the Windows 7 Release Candidate. The timing seems about right, as the Windows team seems to favor repeated in-house and small external tests on a build that is a month or two old before releasing it to the general public for testing. Given the Win 7 RC is expected in April, it’s not a stretch to think 7057 could get the RC stamp.

Microsoft weekend roundup: Win 7, GP 11 and more | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com