Hello everyone!
Working with OneDrive gives users the flexibility to access data on every device. Working with a full desktop in AVD gives you all the possibilities with OneDrive, but for RemoteApps its a bit different. There is no explorer visible and options to start OneDrive. Microsoft has now launched the option to start Onedrive with the RemoteApp in Azure Virtual Desktop. This really changes the the usage of RemoteApps. Lets start configuring OneDrive for RemoteApps on Azure Virtual Desktop!
Prerequisites
- Subscription needed for Azure Virtual Desktop
- Contributer or Owner rights on the subscription (less rights is also possible, but will take more time to setup)
- Pooled Azure Virtual Desktop Hostpool (Validation environment is advised)
- Windows 11 Insider Preview Enterprise multi-session, version 22H2, build 25905 or later
- Hybrid Entra ID joined or Enter ID joined with Intune enrollment
- Latest version of FSLogix installed
- Intune license (because this post uses the Settings Catalog)
- OneDrive license (Microsoft 365 E3 or any license that has OneDrive included)
- Silent account configuration setup
Setting up OneDrive for silent login
First we start with the configuration of a settings catalog profile in Microsoft Intune.
- Go to the Microsoft Intune admin center
- Click on Devices – Windows – Configuration Policies
- Click on Create – New Policy
- Select platform – Windows 10 and later
- Select profile type – Settings catalog
- Click on create
- Give your profile a name
- When you click on Next you can search within the Settings picker
- Search for “silent’ and click on OneDrive
- Now you can click on “Silently sign in users to OneDrive sync app with their Windows credentials”
- Click on Next and assign the proper group for the AVD session hosts
Install OneDrive per-machine
Now we need to install the OneDrive client as per-machine. This is needed, because OneDrive needs to be updated from the Program Files folder, not in the profiles of the users.
Download here the latest OneDrive client.
Use the following parameters in CMD when updating the image with the OneDrive client:
"OneDriveSetup.exe /allusers"
Configure OneDrive for the RemoteApp
The next step is to configure OneDrive to start when the RemoteApp launches. For now we need to create register keys to make that happen. This feature is still in preview, so this could change in the future.
- Open PowerShell with proper admin rights on your image VM
- Now you need create the following key with PowerShell or create it manually with RegEdit.
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" -Name OneDrive -PropertyType String -Value '"C:\Program Files\Microsoft OneDrive\OneDrive.exe" /background' -Force
Testing the RemoteApp with OneDrive
Now its time to test the RemoteApp with OneDrive. I have setup a RemoteApp with Microsoft Edge and went to the Office portal to upload a document from OneDrive. I know that OneDrive is already integrated with the Office Portal. This is only to show the explorer in an easy way. It is important to check if the user is signed in. Check the green marks or the blue cloud when Files on Demand is activated.
Final Thoughts
Using OneDrive with RemoteApps gives more flexibility with Azure Virtual Desktop. This solution will give companies more reasons to use RemoteApps on desktops. This feature is still in preview, so i would not recommend it for production environments. Fee free to comment on this post if you have any questions.
Resources
The following resources are used for this blog post:
Use Microsoft OneDrive with a RemoteApp (preview) – Azure Virtual Desktop | Microsoft Learn
Silently configure user accounts – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn
Install the sync app per-machine (Windows) – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn
