PolicyPak + FSLogix: Manage the Windows 10 Start Menu

Hi. This is Jeremy Moskowitz. In this video, I’m going to show you how you can tame the Windows 10 Start Menu with PolicyPak and FSLogix better together. In this example, I have a bunch of applications that are installed on the machine, but I’m going to use FSLogix to hide or mask those applications. The things is that you want to put them back with FSLogix for some users and put them into special Start Menu groups. That’s exactly what I’m going to show you. Let me show you the lay of the land real fast. In fact, if I were to “Switch user” and show you when I log on as “EastSalesUser1,” FSLogix is exposing “Google Chrome” and “WinZip.” If I were to “Switch user” and log on as “WestSalesUser1” here, FSLogix is exposing “Mozilla Firefox” and “7-Zip File Manager.” Wouldn’t it be great if, like I said, you could have a singular group that had my important desktop apps and had just the apps that were exposed to the user with FSLogix but the Start Menu was being controlled using PolicyPak. It’s drop-dead easy. Let’s see how to do it. Here’s my “Sales” team. I’m going to right click and “Create a GPO in this domain, and link it here” and I’ll call this PolicyPak Start Screen and Taskbar Manager Demo (“PP SSM Demo”) here. I’ll then right click and click “Edit” in this Group Policy Object. Now the best way to do this is on the user side, “PolicyPak.” You’ll go to the “Start Screen Manager for Windows 10.” My suggestion is that you would create two what’s called collections (“New Collection”). A collection is going to evaluate when a certain condition is true, for instance, “When user is in EastSales.” And then there is some configuration here. “Partial” lets the user manage their own groups. “Full” will obliterate what is already there by the user. So maybe I’ll make “Partial” for East Sales and obliterate it for West Sales. I want to make this collection work when the “Security Group” is “EastSalesUsers.” “OK.” We get a little folder there. I’ll create another “New Collection” for “When user is in WestSales.” I’m going to make that “Full” and I’m going to change the “Item Level Targeting” for when “Security Group” is “WestSalesUsers.” There we go. So now we’ve got West Sales Users. Now in “EastSales” users, we want to have a “New Group” and we’ll call that group “Important Apps.” There are a bunch of different configuration items here. I’m not going to worry about that for the purposes of this demo. In “Important Apps” we say for our East Sales Users we want to “Add/New Desktop Application Tile,” one for Chrome, one for WinZip. Let’s go ahead and do that. We’re going to select what’s called a “Registered application.” This machine also has the application, so I’m going to go ahead and pick “Google Chrome” first. We’ll go ahead and pick a “Medium” “Tile Size” here and click “Next.” We’ll call this “Chrome.” It doesn’t matter what it’s called. Then we’ll “Add/New Desktop Application Tile” for WinZip. Let’s go ahead and find WinZip all the way at the bottom. There with go, “WinZip.” Click “Next” and we’ll make that one “Medium” also and we’ll call this “Winzip.” There we go. We’ve created a little pocket for our East Sales Users that’s going to create a group for them. Let’s just see if that works. Let me go ahead and “Switch user” to our “EastSalesUser1” here and let’s see some results. We can see results instantly. Just to prove I’m not pulling a fast one on you here, if I were to go to the Start Menu of this machine, I don’t have that group ready to go. That group doesn’t exist here. Let me go ahead and run GP Update (“gpupdate”) and give this a second to finish up. Even while the user is logged on, there are the “Important Apps” right there managing the Start Menu just the way you want. We’ll come back to that. Let’s go ahead and go back to the “GPMC” here and let’s create our second group, one for our “WestSales” users. We’ll create a “New Group” here. We’ll call this Important Apps for West or “West Apps” or something like that. We said we wanted to put Firefox and 7-Zip in there. Let’s go ahead and do that. Right click, “Add/New Desktop Application Tile.” It’s a “Registered application.” We’ll take “7-Zip File Manager” first because it’s right there. I’ll make these icons “Small.” Why not? We’ll call this “7zip.” I’ll create another one here for Firefox, which is under M for Mozilla. I’ll go ahead and find that guy. There we go, “Mozilla Firefox.” We automatically figure out the correct position for you. We’ll call this “Firefox.” Okay, great. Just like that, we’re ready to go. Let’s go ahead and take a look. Let’s “Switch user” here. We’ll log on as our “WestSalesUser1” guy now. Just to prove a point, this guy doesn’t have the group you want. Let’s go ahead log off and log back on. I want to show you how fast this works. Let’s go ahead and “Sign out” and then sign back in. Here we are back in. If we go ahead and go to the Start Menu, we took away all the applications because we made it Full and not Partial, and we have the two applications for our “West Apps” and they run just like that. There’s one more magic trick up our sleeve here with regards to Start Menu and Taskbar, which is the Taskbar. The idea behind the Taskbar is that you can add and pin items right here to the Taskbar. Let’s go ahead do that. This you can do right here under “Taskbar Manager for Windows 10.” You just right click, “Add Collection.” You can give it any collection name you want. I’ll just give this “Coll 2.” It doesn’t matter what it’s called. Then inside here, this is where you’re going to also add in your apps, either the desktop applications or your Windows universal apps. It’s okay if you even give it an application that FSLogix is hiding. It doesn’t create some kind of blank space or something weird. It just works the way you would expect. We’ll click on “Registered applications” here. I’ll go ahead and pick “7-Zip File Manager” first. I’ll call this “7zip” here. I’ll go ahead and “Add” another “New Desktop Application.” I’m going to go ahead and pick the next one we had, “Google Chrome.” Pick that guy here, “chrome.” And I’m going to add in Firefox, which is under M for Mozilla again, “Firefox.” Then I’m going to add in WinZip as my last one here all the way at the bottom. Now you might be thinking, isn’t this going to hit every single person, both East and West? And it is, which is totally fine. Let’s go ahead and check it out and see it all work. In order to see this, you need to have GP Update (“gpupdate”) run. You have to log off and log back on. You only see the Task Manager change at logon time. We’ll go ahead and GP Update (“gpupdate”) here, give this two seconds, and then we’ll log off and log back on. We’ll go ahead and “Sign out” and sign back in. Here’s our “WestSalesUser1.” Let’s take a look at the Taskbar now. We’ve added the icons right here, and you can also see that the Start Menu is controlled. If we were to “Switch user” to our “EastSalesUser1,” let’s just prove a point. Let’s go ahead and just log off and log on. At logon time, you’re going to see the changes to the Taskbar. Let’s go ahead and check that out. There they are right there. So you have the Start Menu controlled. You have the Taskbar controlled. Everything works just the way you would expect. Applications hidden and exposed using FSLogix and the Start Menu and the Taskbar managed with PolicyPak, great better together story. If you’re looking to get started, hit us up and we’ll get you the bits and you can get started right away. Thanks so much.