We're always cooking up new stuff. Check back often to learn about all the changes to WorkAnywhere.

Administrators can now choose to manually set a password for a user or to send them a self-service reset link.

User Self-Service Password Reset

Users can now use the Cloud VDI Portal (portal.cloudvdi.net) to reset their own password via an email link. If the user has an email addressed defined for their WorkAnywhere user account, they can initiate a self-service password reset.

You can now configure VMs in WorkAnywhere to automatically expand their disks when they run low on free space. You can enable this option in the Cloud Management > VM Instances module for individual VMs.

We've been hard at work updating our error messages and informational notifications to make sure they provide relevant information on what failed and why.

We're excited to announce our new branding for itopia CAS. As Cloud Automation Stack has grown over the years, we decided it was time to give it a name that was more representative of what the platform does. Over the coming months, you'll see references to CAS being replaced with WorkAnywhere throughout itopia. Fear not, we're continuing to expand and improve the product, no matter what it's called!

The Applications Module has been revamped to provide a better publishing experience. Now, each application is published to a single Collection Pool, and user assignment is more straightforward. For Windows 10 Collection Pools, publishing applications creates shortcuts on the users' desktops; for RDS Collections, applications are published as RemoteApps.

Additionally, Collection Pools can now be configured to publish only their RemoteApps or both the full desktop and their RemoteApps to the Cloud VDI Portal.

CAS now lets administrators assign users to multiple Collection Pools. When the user accesses the Cloud VDI Portal, they will see Cloud Desktops and RemoteApps for all Collection Pools that they are assigned to.

The itopia Cloud VDI Portal (portal.cloudvdi.net) is now available for all users. Cloud VDI Portal is an evolution of the MyRDP Portal and allows users to access their Cloud Desktop resources in a more secure manner. Users are now authenticated at the portal and can choose the desktop or RemoteApp to launch.

CAS admins can now "shadow" a user's active RDS session, either with view-only or full control permissions. The user is always prompted to allow the shadow connection. Learn more about session shadowing in the itopia Helpcenter.

The default "Remove" behavior for managing users, groups, and VMs in CAS has been modified. These objects are now removed from CAS without deleing the underlying object in AD or Google Cloud. Administrators can still choose to delete the underlying object when prompted for confirmation.

When creating an API Key in the CAS admin console, administrators can now assign a specific CAS admin role and scope the key to specific deployments.

Administrators can now redeploy specific User Session Servers (USS) from the Collection Pool's base image. This is helpful if a single server is experiencing issues or corruption. To redeploy a USS, use the VM Instances module to view the USS details and click the Redeploy button.

In each new deployment, CAS creates a number of group policy objects (GPOs) to provide a baseline configuration for security and features and also to control certain settings managed through the CAS Admin Console. These GPOs have all been renamed with an "itopia-" prefix and the names more clearly reflect their behavior.

The CAS Admin Portal has been refreshed with a cleaner look, more intuitive layout, and better overall responsiveness. We've also created an all-new CAS Deployment Wizard that makes it easier than ever to create a new Cloud Desktop environment in just a few minutes.

Certain features in the CAS Admin Portal may have moved; please refer to the latest documentation if you can't find what you're looking for.

CAS can now create new RD Collection Pools using Google Cloud sole-tenant nodes (STNs). You can enable STN support in your CAS deployment and configure node group settings individually for each Collection Pool. CAS can also deploy your custom OS images that have been configured with bring your own license (BYOL) support and also help you configure MAK or KMS licensing for those VM instances. More information is available in the article Support for Sole-Tenant Nodes.

Previously, creating a new CAS deployment required the use of a custom external DNS address and providing a SSL certificate from a public certificate authority (CA). Deployments created after August 2020 are now automatically configured with a unique external address using itopia's cloudvdi.net DNS namespace and protected with SSL certificates from a public CA. Administrators can still configure a custom external DNS name after the deployment is created. More information is available in Post-Deployment Tasks.

Administrators can create custom roles for their organization admins, allowing delegation only to specific deployments and to specific CAS modules.

Administrators can disable the MyRDP portal for their deployment. This setting can be found in the CAS Admin Portal, using Deployment Settings > General.

CAS now supports using FSLogix Profile Containers rather than User Profile Disks (UPDs) for supporting roaming profiles. FSLogix offers better performance and more flexibility when accessing the profile from different regions.

FSLogix Profile Containers are the default option when creating a deployment, but User Profile Disks will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future.

CAS now supports using Active Directory trusts for your deployment. With an Active Directory trust, your Cloud Desktop infrastructure resides in its own domain, but users can log in using their credentials from your existing Active Directory domain.

Learn more about AD trust support here.

CAS supports creating two different types of Collection Pools: Shared and Dedicated. Shared Collection Pools allow users to connect to connect to any Session Server in the pool, and each Session Server can host multiple concurrent users. Dedicated Collection Pools assign each user to a specific Session Server, and each Session Server supports only a single concurrent session.

Use Dedicated Collection Pools for specific workloads, such as users that require high performance or applications that don't support multi-session environments.

Learn more about Collection Pool Types here.

Organization Owners can restrict CAS access to accounts that are authenticated with Google or Microsoft SSO.

Before CAS creates new VMs (as part of autoscaling or manual server creation), it will check the GCP project quotas to ensure that all VMs can be created.

When creating a new server image in the CAS console, administrators can choose to join the image template VM to their Active Directory domain.

Applications published from the CAS console can now be assigned to specific collections

When an autoscale event requires servers to be deleted (as part of a scale-down), those servers do not accept new connections from users. This helps prevent users from creating a new session on a server only to be disconnected again shortly afterwards.

The CAS console provides more feedback on task statuses and failures.