Microsoft today announced the release of a beta for its Application Virtualization product App-V version 5.0 service pack 2 and the beta of version 2.0 of its User Environment Management solution UE-V. Once released, both products will be included in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), which is available for Microsoft Software Assurance users.
Both version will support the Windows 8.1 client Operating System for which Microsoft announced a Tech Preview during its annual Build Conference.
UE-V 2.0 will provide the following new features:
- Support for Windows 8 applications, administrators can define which Windows 8 apps are synchronized and all the apps that come out of the box in Windows 8 and 8.1 can roam their settings by default. The triggers used to roam the Windows 8 apps settings are on open, close, loss of focus and by default every 30 minutes.
- Company Settings Center, which allows users to control, view and troubleshoot application and OS settings monitored by UE-V. It also allows the user to manually sync their settings without having to wait for an automatic sync to occur
- Synchronization improvements, the new sync provider in UE-V 2.0 now also allows a sync at specific intervals that you can define (default is every 30 minutes) and eliminates the need for the Offline Files technology in Windows which was previously required for users who were not always connected.
Service Pack 2 for App-V 5.0 will provide the following new features:
- Shell extension support, allowing virtualized applications to also integrate with contextual options like send to zip or backup to archive in the Windows Shell.
- Sequencing enhancements, enabling it to automatically detect with the option to include, run time dependencies like MSXML and Visual C++ libraries in the App-V package during the sequencing process.
For users who still use App-V 4.6 Microsoft also released a beta today of Service Pack 3 for App-V 4.6 which can be found here.