What did I learn at Microsoft Ignite The Tour in Amsterdam?

Last week I visited Microsoft Ignite The Tour in Amsterdam. This gave me a great opportunity to discuss developments with Microsoft, as well as meeting (potential) Workspace 365 partners. I’ve spoken to many partners and learned which subjects are important to them, which helps us in developing the easiest-to-use workspace. In this article, I’d like to share what I learned from Microsoft Ignite The Tour and what we do with this information.

Why did I visit Microsoft Ignite The Tour in Amsterdam?

One of the perks of visiting Microsoft Ignite The Tour is the active community. Many of our partners visit Microsoft Ignite. By visiting the event I learned their thoughts on the new features or products and how they see these developments cooperate with their Workspace 365 offering.

Testing the new public preview of Windows Virtual Desktop

A newly released item by Microsoft, is the public preview of Windows Virtual Desktop. This allows each enterprise user to test the virtual Windows 10-desktop which is hosted in Azure. For those who don’t know it: Windows Virtual Desktop is a desktop- and application virtualisation service in the cloud. It is a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) which aims to simplify management and allows multi-sessions for Windows 10.

After the announcement we also received access to the public preview, which we will test to discover the best ways to integrate Windows Virtual Desktop within Workspace 365. We would love to enable people to access any application with a single click (like we do with Citrix Virtual Apps and Clientless RDP). By doing this, you can enable access to virtual applications for those who need it, while having a cloud workspace with the same interface for those that don’t need virtual applications.

At our customers, we see that approximately 80% of employees can work completely in the cloud. The other 20%, need a virtual desktop, however, they also need one workspace with easy access to all their web applications, information, communication and documents. Be sure to subscribe to our blog to keep up to date on these tests and developments.

Quickly create Power BI dashboards for Workspace 365

During Microsft Ignite The Tour in Amsterdam, many people received training in using the Power BI desktop app to quickly create dashboards. The Power BI dashboards or tiles you create are easily integrated within Workspace 365. Furthermore, Microsoft is enabling software developers to create Power BI templates, which gives you more insight into data from any application.

Niklas Jern, Ironstone and Mark Grasmayer, Workspace 365 at Microsoft Ignite The Tour

 

I learned about a great example of a Power BI template at the event. Niklas Jern, Team Lead Modern Workplace at Ironstone, showed me their integration with Printix. Printix is a tool for secure cloud print management. It allows you to eliminate print servers and move the management of print infrastructure to the cloud.

Additionally, all your reports can be displayed in Power BI. Printix Power BI solution provides you with a low-cost open source data analytics product. The Printix Power BI template is designed to provide insight into print usage showing statistics for users, printers, workstations, print queues, locations and historical data.

Admins or managers are able to integrate all these printing statistics within Workspace 365, giving you a view of the data each time you visit the workspace:

Why do you need local storage when you use OneDrive, SharePoint and Workspace 365?

A feature that isn’t new, but which deserves more attention is the OneDrive sync client. With Workspace 365 we integrate with Office 365 as it gives great syncing possibilities. From Workspace 365, you can easily make a folder available on your device. Simply visit the folder, click Sync and follow the steps.

What I love about the OneDrive sync client is that you are able to manage your disk space. Instead of making all your files available offline, you can choose to make some files only available online. If you work with videos, images or other large files you don’t need on a daily basis you will love this. Just visit your synced folder in the local file explorer, right click on a file (or select multiple files) and choose “Clear space”. The file will remain visible, but it turns to 0 bytes. You do keep all the thumbnails and details (also in other applications). After opening a file, it will be downloaded. This trick is not new, but it was a good reminder to me, as it allowed me to clear up 35 GB of content.

What did you learn, or do you want to see in Workspace 365?

I’m really curious: what was your most important finding at Microsoft Ignite? Feel free to drop me a message or mail. Did you see something that should be integrated into Workspace 365? Visit our Support Portal to request a feature and we will dive into it!