in this video I show you how to configure email discovery for Windows
virtual desktop clients
hello I'm Travis and this is Ciraltos so far I primarily use the web client
when connecting to Windows virtual desktop in my videos I started working
with different remote desktop clients recently and realized that configuring
the client with an email address is much easier than adding a URL in this video
I'm going to walk through setting up email discovery for the remote desktop
clients before that please subscribe like share and click the bell icon for
new content all of this can be done while maintaining social distancing
email discovery has been around for some time with Windows Remote Desktop
Services if you haven't used it before here's how it works the remote desktop
client needs URL to identify the location of a feed the feed is a list of
Remote Desktop resources available from the organization with Windows Remote
Desktop Services that URL was unique for each organization Windows virtual
desktop makes this much easier everyone uses the same URL you can share the URL
with end-users but who are we kidding that would be difficult to manage
there's no way I'd remember it email discovery makes configuring the client
much easier email discovery works by adding a text record to your
organization's DNS this is a value that points to the Windows virtual desktop
feed the user enters their email address into the remote desktop client instead
of a URL the client checks DNS for the email domain to see if the feed URL
value exists if it does the client uses that URL in DNS to locate the Windows or
virtual desktop feed for email feed discovery to work a text record has to
be added to DNS the values for that text record are on the screen there's a host
record that's what the client will search for the text record that's the
feed URL and a time-to-live value the time to live can be higher than 300 if
needed also the URL listed on the screen is for
the spring update version Windows virtual desktop keep in mind
that an entry has to be added to the email domain so if the email address for
the user is user one at Sur all dos com the entry has to be added to these or
all those com DNS servers and the user doesn't really need an email address for
this to work the remote desktop client just needs the domain name to find the
text record you could tell the users to use their UPN but for most users and
email address is easier to communicate also it's common to use different
internal and external DNS servers if that's the case add the record to both
DNS environments let's get started in the demo I'm going to walk through
setting the external DNS entry in network solutions DNS services and then
do the same for my internal Windows DNS once that's finished we'll test it you
will need admin rights to whatever system host DNS to make these changes
let's start the demo let's begin let's start with the remote desktop client and
try to add my feed notice that there's a subscribe option where users can just
sign in not all remote desktop clients have that right now say for iOS for
example I'm going to use the subscribe with URL also some versions of the
remote desktop client have the option to add a computer or workspace use the add
workspace for this so I could add that URL if I wanted to but that's not what
this video is about so if I add a user's email address
you'll notice it says I can't find a workspace associated with this email
address that's what we're gonna fix also I want to point out way up here in the
corner there's an orange icon for remote desktop the remote desktop version I'm
using has this orange icon not the version from the Microsoft app store
with the blue icon that one doesn't work with Windows virtual desktop let's set
up DNS next Here I am in network solutions DNS settings now there's a lot
of different options for external DNS you could host it with Windows you could
host it through network solutions GoDaddy every place is going to be a
little bit different in how this is done so I'm just going to run through this as
an example and I'm going to go to manage advanced
DNS records and if you have problems finding how to do this check their help
section and see how to add a text record in their DNS server they're all kind of
similar so I'm going to add it here and notice also I'm using sir Altos net
knots for Altos comm it's because there's a delay and I want to give this
video done in one day so I already added this setting to sir Altos comm but we're
gonna come in and show how to do it on a different domain so here is my text
record and I'm going to edit text records and here's where I'm gonna add a
text record first I'll add the host and that's underscore MS our ABC now I can
try to set the time to live to 300 which is what microsoft recommends but it's
not going to take it I'll try anyway and then I'm gonna add this URL that's the
URL to the Windows virtual desktop feed
I'll click continue okay and it says the the smallest amount we can go is 3600 so
this is the time that DNS servers hold this information and the cache before it
does a new lookup so it really doesn't matter I'll just add 3600 and move on
with our lives here it says it can take up to 24 hours for the update to
replicate throughout the whole interwebs so I'm gonna save changes and here it
says 24 to 48 normally it only takes you know half an hour or so but it all
depends on where you're updating it and where you're coming from that is how you
add a text record for the email feed through network solutions and any other
external DNS provider like this should be pretty similar we can do a test quick
by opening the command prompt and I'll run an NS look up against the type text
for that record we just added so that didn't take long at all and if you're
lucky enough it won't take yours long at all either
but it could even longer that all depends on the
system you're working on the actual replication time is typically out of our
control okay let's set up internal DNS and this assumes that your internal DNS
is Windows ad DNS if not you'll need to find your DNS admin and have them help
you if you're the DNS admin and that shouldn't be a problem so I'm gonna find
my zone which is sur Altos comm right click other new records I'm gonna scroll
down to text create record and the name will be that host name and the text will
be the feed URL I'll click OK and done then at the bottom here we can see it
was added if I hop over to a command prompt I'm gonna do an MS lookup for
that same record but at Sur Altos com and again this is testing my internal
DNS there it is so the records coming back we're just gonna minimize this here
we are back at the external command prompt I'm gonna run the same command
again but this time against comm just to make sure it's there so what I'm doing
here is I don't have a Windows virtual desktop at sir Altos net Setzer Altos de
comm I was just using that as an example of how to add an external DNS record for
this demo but they're both listed now so let's go back to the client I'm gonna
subscribe with the URL and this time I'm going to add my email address and you
can see it's finding that workspace URL so now I'll click Next and I'll sign in
and I'm gonna uncheck this and there we go it found my workspace that's it for
the demo that's how we setup Windows virtual desktop email feed discovery on
an internal and external domain I hope that makes it easier for your users to
access Windows virtual desktop if so please subscribe like and all that jazz
thanks for watching