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Migrating to Windows 10

Leveraging RES ONE Workspace


MIGRATING TO WINDOWS 10 | Leveraging RES ONE Workspace

Disclaimer
While every care has been taken by RES Software to ensure that the information contained in this document is
correct and complete, it is possible that this is not the case. RES Software provides the information "as is", without
any warranty for its soundness, suitability for a different purpose or otherwise. To the maximum extent permitted by
applicable law, RES Software is not liable for any damage which has occurred or may occur because of or in any
respect related to the use of this information. RES Software may change or terminate this document at any time
without further notice and shall not be responsible for any consequence(s) arising there from. Subject to this
disclaimer, RES Software is not responsible for any contributions by third parties to this information.

Copyright Notice
Copyright on software and all Materials 1998-2014 Real Enterprise Solutions Development B.V., P.O. Box 33, 5201
AA `s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. RES and the RES Software Logo are either registered trademarks or service
marks of Real Enterprise Solutions Nederland B.V. in Europe, the United States and other countries. RES
Automation Manager, RES Workspace Manager, RES Suite, RES Virtual Desktop Extender, RES ONE Service Store
and RES VDX are trade names of Real Enterprise Solutions Nederland B.V. in Europe, the United States and other
countries. All other product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or service marks of their
respective owners. Real Enterprise Solutions Development B.V., The Netherlands has the following patents: U.S.
Pat. "US 7,433,962", "US 7,565,652", "US 7,725,527", other patents pending or granted.

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Table of contents
Table of contents ........................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction.................................................................................................................................................... 4

Situation overview .................................................................................................................................. 4

General recommendations ............................................................................................................................ 4

Windows 10 servicing options ....................................................................................................................... 4

Test environment guidelines ......................................................................................................................... 6

Separate RES ONE Workspace test environment ................................................................................ 6

Route-to-life ........................................................................................................................................... 6

The migration process ................................................................................................................................... 7

Workspace containers and zones.......................................................................................................... 7

User experience ..................................................................................................................................... 9

Workspace control on global user settings ............................................................................................ 9

User settings .......................................................................................................................................... 9

Process interception ............................................................................................................................ 10

Pilot phase ........................................................................................................................................... 10

Considerations and other best practices ..................................................................................................... 11

Disable active setup ............................................................................................................................. 11

Not all applications in Start Menu ........................................................................................................ 11

RES ONE Workspace folder redirection .............................................................................................. 11

Start Menu folder structure in Microsoft Windows 10 .......................................................................... 11

Choose the right XenApp and XenDesktop servicing option ............................................................... 12

RES Success Center .......................................................................................................................... 12

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MIGRATING TO WINDOWS 10 | Leveraging RES ONE Workspace

Introduction
Microsoft reports that 96% of its enterprise customers are currently piloting Windows 10, poising it to be
the most quickly adopted OS in history. As teams begin planning for this migration, many of their scars
from their Windows XP to Windows 7 migration are remembered. A lot of work was done to maintain a
consistent user experience that IT does not want to lose, and some companies still use legacy software
on Windows XP despite the end-of-life of the operating system, creating even greater management
challenges.
Many companies are interested in Windows 10. The return of the Start Menu and the maturity of this
operating system, when compared to its predecessor, Windows 8, has created a lot of momentum.
However, headaches are just around the corner for architects and system administrators when they recall
experiences from previous operating system migrations. How do we preserve the user experience and
settings? What about route to life? All these topics need to be addressed during the migration without
negatively impacting user productivity.
RES ONE Workspace offers a phased approach for operating system migrations. RES ONE Workspace
makes it possible to gradually deploy Windows 10 into your organization without losing user productivity.

Situation overview
When moving towards a new operating system, it is important to know the business drivers to validate
and execute a successful Windows 10 migration. In this document, we describe the business value of
RES ONE Workspace and a possible migration strategy moving to Windows 10.
This document will describe the high-level procedure of introducing Windows 10 into your organization.

General Recommendations
Check the RES Success Center https://success.res.com for the latest updates and articles on
Windows 10.
Check the RES Success Center for the latest supported versions in the respective Microsoft
Windows Service Branches
Maintaining a RES ONE Workspace test environment, separate and apart from production, is
crucial to success.

Windows 10 Servicing Options


Its important to determine which service branch is going to be used in your environment. Microsoft
recommends that business critical systems should opt for the Long-Term Servicing Branch (LTSB),
while day-to-day devices should probably use Current Branch for Business (CBB). More important to
consider is the possibility to defer updates on these branches compared to the Current Branch (CB)
servicing option. Windows 10 will give enterprises less time to implement new features, which will likely
impact companies change procedures, and selecting the right service branch will be an important part of
managing these changes over time.
User experience is top priority for every company migrating to a new OS. Therefore, it is crucial to have a
Pilot/route to life plan in place that clearly addresses issues in the migration process in an early stage.

The following table provides an overview of the planning implications of the three Windows 10 servicing
options so that organizations can be well informed before they start a Windows 10 deployment project.

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Source: https://technet.microsoft.com/de-de/itpro/windows/manage/introduction-to-windows-10-servicing

IT administrators can configure Windows 10 devices to:

Receive feature upgrades immediately after Microsoft makes them available publicly, so users
can gain access to new features, experiences, and functionality as soon as possible. For more
information, see immediate feature upgrade installation with CB servicing.
Defer receiving feature upgrades for a period of approximately four months after Microsoft makes
them available publicly, to provide IT administrators with time to perform pre-deployment testing
and provide feature upgrades releases with additional time-in-market to mature. For more
information, see deferred feature upgrade installation with CBB servicing.
Receive only servicing updates for the duration of their Windows 10 deployment to reduce the
number of non-essential changes made to the device. For more information, see Install servicing
updates only by using LTSB servicing. The breakout of a companys devices by the categories
above is likely to vary significantly by industry and other factors. What is most important is that
companies can decide what works best for them and can choose different options for different
devices.

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Test Environment Guidelines


Separate RES ONE Workspace test environment
RES recommends the best practice of building a test environment to validate all changes before pushing
live to the end user. This is especially true when introducing a new operating system (such as Windows
10) into an environment. As such, it is recommended to vet all changes and functionality in a test RES
ONE Workspace environment. Once a successful configuration has been created and tested, it can be
exported as a building block and imported into the production environment.

Route to life
Most enterprise organizations have a tiered approach to rolling out and maintaining their production
environments. RES recommends following route to life plan.*

*This route to life plan can be automated when you have RES ONE Automation in place

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The Migration Process


Workspace containers and zones
Regardless if Windows 10 is used in a physical or virtual environment, RES recommends separating the
technology stack. Windows 10 has a different way of applying user experience than its predecessors, so
undesired behavior is to be expected when applying User Settings from the previous operating systems
to Windows 10. Separation can be easily achieved by defining Workspace Containers for Windows 10
devices. Dynamic Workspace Containers can be created by assigning Windows 10 build-specific access
controls.
Move to User Context and choose
Workspace Containers and choose New
Enter the Container name:

Move to the tab Computer control and Select


Include all Agents

Move to the tab Access control and select the


Windows 10 devices at Location and Devices

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If needed to make a more detailed distinction between the various Windows 10 versions (CB, CBB or
LTSB), add additional zone rules based on registry value:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings
DWORD: DeferUpgrade
Value = 0 (Current Branch)
Value = 1 (Current Branch for Business)

For Windows 10 LTSB:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion
DWORD: EditionId
Value = LTSB

The Workspace Container for Windows 10 in RES ONE Workspace can now be used for Windows 10
specific configuration. For example, the application settings for Windows 10 would be different as Tiles
can be removed from the Windows 10 Start screen, and Active Setup can be enabled for this workspace
container.

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User experience
When it comes to User Persona, most companies will want to migrate most settings from Windows 7 to
Windows 10 to avoid disruption with end users and keep their productivity levels high during the
transition. Since RES ONE Workspace decouples the profile from the operating system, it can seamlessly
and accurately manage the migration process of profile for a seamless transition. However, the Windows
10 desktop experience with the newly introduced Start Menu does offer a different experience from older
versions of Windows. Therefore, RES recommends the following best practices:

Workspace control on global user settings

Make sure Windows 7 Global User Settings are only applied to the Windows 7 Workspace Containers.
Applying Global User Settings to Windows 10 devices might lead to unexpected results. Configure Global
User Settings specifically for the Windows 10 Workspace Containers. Thus, the desktop and general
experience of Windows 10 will be new to the user, but all changes will be saved instantly for Windows 10,
resulting in a consistent user experience.
The following Global settings are currently available specifically for Windows 10 in RES ONE Workspace:
Windows / 10 / Control Panel / Accessibility Options
Windows / 10 / Control Panel / Screensaver
Windows / 10 / Control Panel / Sounds
Windows / 10 / Control Panel / Taskbar
Windows / 10 / Control Panel / Themes
Windows / 10 / Control Panel / Visual Settings
Windows / 10 / Windows Explorer / Explorer Folder General
Windows / 10 / Windows Explorer / Explorer Folder Search
Windows / 10 / Windows Explorer / Explorer Folder View
Windows / 10 / User Certificates

User settings

If RES ONE Workspace is already configured in a Windows 7 environment, application specific


configuration is already captured. These application settings will be automatically migrated to the
applications on the Windows 10 device if the same application versions are being used on the Windows
10 devices. If different versions of applications are being used on Windows 10, investigation needs to be
done to determine if the same User Settings will still be applicable on newer versions.
The User Settings can be applied without Workspace Control so all Application User Settings will roam
across the devices.
Please be aware that Universal apps in Windows 10 (sometimes also referred to as Metro Style apps,
Modern Apps or Windows Store Apps) currently are not (yet) supported by RES ONE Workspace from a
management perspective.

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Process interception

RES ONE Workspace can intercept processes that are started through unmanaged shortcuts and treat
them as if they were a managed application. Process interception for unmanaged shortcuts detects the
start of a process and checks whether a managed application is available to the user that also uses the
same process. If such a match is found, all the settings and configurations for the managed application
are applied before the process can continue.
This process will seamlessly apply actions and settings configured on applications on both Windows 7
and Windows 10. With this, migration of settings will be done on the fly.
For example, in a session where Microsoft Word is available as a managed application on Windows 7, a
user finds and double-clicks an unmanaged shortcut to Microsoft Word. This launches winword.exe,
which RES ONE Workspace Manager intercepts. RES ONE Workspace Manager first checks that
Microsoft Word can start, based on time restrictions, maximum number of instances, licensing etc. If so,
RES ONE Workspace applies the settings and actions configured for Microsoft Word, such as User
Settings, Drive and Port Mappings and Environment Variables. Whenever a user changes settings, these
are preserved at application close. All these actions are performed in the exact same way on Windows 10
and all settings stored are applied from a predefined file share accessible from Windows 10 and Windows
7. Thus, Microsoft Word starts up on Windows 10, and it has all its familiar RES ONE Workspace
configurations for the managed application Microsoft Word.
The second advantage of using process interception is the processing of File type association is done by
the OS. No File type associations are needed anymore for specific application, which enhances the logon
performance.

Pilot phase
When leveraging the capabilities in RES ONE Workspace, it is easy to migrate from a previous operating
system to Windows 10. All settings are preserved and applied in the new Windows 10 Workspace and
user productivity is maintained.
When the pilot phase starts, system administrators can monitor the session by viewing a Workspace
Analysis from within the RES ONE Workspace Console and make any necessary adjustments. For
example, when user settings are not applied correctly, user Settings can be restored quickly via the RES
Management Console.
Next to the restore options, RES ONE Workspace delivers several diagnostic options to clearly analyze
logins, and give you additional insights for optimizing the workspace.
RES recommends applying and preserving Windows 10 specific user settings based on workspace
control, so preserved windows 10 settings wont interfere with existing user settings captured on previous
operating systems.

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Considerations and other Best Practices


To optimize the migration to Windows 10, RES recommends additional best practices to reduce the level
of effort and deliver a superior user experience.

Disable Active Setup (skips first-time shell initialization) setting must be unchecked
Microsoft Windows 10 performs several important actions during the Active Setup. At Composition >
Applications, on the Settings tab, uncheck the setting Disable Active Setup (skips first-time shell init) to
allow these actions to be executed correctly (the setting is checked by default).

Not all applications are shown in the start menu, start screen and /or taskbar
This is default behavior because Windows 10 allows only one icon per process. There are two possible
solutions for this.
Apply regkeys in specific for RDP and IE applications to allow multiple icons.
Create a customappusermodelids.xml configure for each managed application for which you
want to make it possible to be displayed multiple times, add the file to the Custom Resources.

RES ONE Workspace Folder Redirection not reflected in Microsoft Windows 10 explorer views
"Quick access" and "This PC"
At Composition > Actions By Type > Files and Folders > Folder Redirection, when redirections are
configured for one or more folders, the Microsoft Windows 10 explorer views "Quick access" and "This
PC" might not use the redirected locations for these folders.

Start Menu folder structure in Microsoft Windows 10


If the Start Menu in Microsoft Windows 10 contains a folder with subfolders, only the top level folder is
displayed in the Start Menu. Applications from any subfolders are listed by application name as if they
were in the top folder.
This Windows 10 behavior affects RES ONE Workspace sessions in the following scenario:
At Composition > Applications, on the Start Menu tab, applications are sorted into a nested
folder structure.
A RES ONE Workspace session is running on Microsoft Windows 10.

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Choose the right XenApp and XenDesktop Servicing Option

If using Citrix, make sure to choose the right XenApp and XenDesktop Servicing Options (LTSR) that fits
your Windows Servicing option.

Source https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX205549

RES Success Center

Check the RES Success Center https://success.ressoftware.com about the latest updates and articles on
Windows 10.

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