AppSense - Environment Manager 8.4 - new Features

Hi,

as I am testing right now the new DesktopNow Product (former Management Suite) I will give you a short overview of the new features in Envionment Manager 8.4

• Configuration Change Tracking:
  I have waited for this feature for a long time, now all changes are saved in a file (history.sdf) in the configuration. This feature has to be explicity enabled in your configuration on the "Change Tracking" ribbon
  
• Configuration Layering:
  Also a long awaited feature for bigger environments. So if you have different teams for your Citrix Farm or your desktops but want to have the same EM configuration now you have the chance to layer it one configuration. So you have a host configuration which is your base and then you could add different layers to this base configuration. So any team could work on this own configuration and don't see the whole configuration.
  
• Configuration Upgrade Tool:
  A textbased tool to upgrade more configuration from an older version to the latest 8.4 version.
  
• Endpoint Merging:
  Here you could more configurations on the endpoint to a new one without the need to re-rollout the whole configuration if you only change one litte thing. This has to be done with XML Manifest files and seems to be very complicated to me on the first look but I have not tested it right now so thats only a first look.
  
• SCCM 2012:
  Now you could open and save configuration from your SCCM 2012 server.
  
• MSP Patching:
  As most of the great software vendors now also AppSense switched to MSP Patching model which seems to be a great step forward in the technology which minimizes the number of reboots if you rollout a new version.
  
• Personalization Server:
  Some updates on handling deleted data and updates for the Quick Setup Wizard.

So we have waited some time for the new release but my tests are running very smooth so it seems to be a stable product with some great new features.

Grettings

michael.obernberger