WVD: Application Delegation

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Hello-

Mike Rodrick's Hands-On with WVD course was hugely helpful for me getting WVD up and running. I have run into a bit of a snag though because I think I may have fundamentally misunderstood how applications work.

I currently have one Host Pool, with a single Session Host in it (for now - ultimately I will have several). I was under the impression that it was possible to set up a session host with all the software I would need on it, and then have application groups that would delegate access to those applications for specific employee groups. For example, I might like for all employees who log into their WVD windows environment to have access to Outlook, but only Managers who log into it to have access to a scheduling application, also running in the windows desktop environment.

When I attempted to set this up, my test user didn't get a desktop at all, it only got the list of applications as virtualized applications. On review, it looks like in order to use these in a Windows environment you have to be given access to the Desktop application group, which gives the user full access to everything installed, and since there can only be one Desktop group per Host Pool, the rest have to be the virtualized style applications. I'm now panicking because the way I thought I understood this to work seems to be wrong. If I want the above scenario to work, would I have to create an entire separate host pool and session host with its own application (desktop) group?

Or is there a way to pull off what I'm describing?

Thanks!!

@Chris-Zammit ,

Glad you enjoyed the WVD course!

You are correct in that there is only one desktop application group (DAG) per host pool. If a user has access to the DAG, then they have access to everything.

Are your users running a Windows environment locally? If you publish an application or applications to users, if they are running Windows 10, then the applications will appear on their start menu, as if they were installed locally.

Another solution that would work for your scenario is MSIX app attach. Instead of installing applications on the session host, applications are virtualized and stored separately. Then users connect to the session host, and based on their account, the applications they should have access to are mounted, much like the FSLogix profiles. This feature is in preview currently, I have not had a chance to create any videos yet.

Here is a link to the Microsoft documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/overview

Let me know if this is what you are looking for or have any more questions.

Hi Mike, thanks for the reply! We're actually evaluating a couple different situations - while my user pool are currently using Windows 10 desktops, we're looking to make the switch to Chromebooks and/or Chromeboxes, and have users log into WVD using either the Remote Desktop app, or just through HTML5 via Chrome. As far as "publishing" the applications to the users, what you're describing is exactly what I'd like to have - applications either being there, or not being there, in their WVD desktop environment however I determine that they should or shouldn't have access to them.

Ultimately what I would like would be an experience that is familiar - just like using their normal windows environment, except it's in WVD - but somewhat bespoke where I can provision different users to have access to different applications within that desktop environment.

Thank you for the suggestion about MSIX app attach, I wasn't familiar with that and I'll look into it. I do have FSLogix up and running already for user profiles.

Thanks again!

@Chris-Zammit ,

You're welcome!

With that description, WVD and MSIX app attach is going to work best for you. It would allow Chromebook users to get a full Windows 10 desktop experience and give you the ability to decide what applications are available dynamically.

Each application is stored on a separate VHD, Logon scripts can then determine which applications are available by mounting the appropriate VHD(s).

Timing, lol. MSIX app attach integration with the Azure portal just went into public preview! Should be much easier to work with now!

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-virtual-desktop/msix-app-attach-azure-portal-integration-public-preview/m-p/1986231