Use the administrative template for Azure Virtual Desktop

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We've created an administrative template for Azure Virtual Desktop to configure some features of Azure Virtual Desktop. You can use the template with:

  • Group Policy with Active Directory (AD), which enables you to centrally configure session hosts that are joined to an AD domain.

  • Group Policy locally on each session host, but we don't recommend this to manage session hosts at scale.

You can configure the following features with the administrative template:

Prerequisites

Before you can configure the template settings, you need to meet the following prerequisites. Select a tab for your scenario.

For Group Policy in an Active Directory (AD) domain, you need the following permission:

  • A member of the Domain Admins security group.

Configure the administrative template

To configure the administrative template, select a tab for your scenario and follow these steps.

Note

These steps assume you're using the Central Store for Group Policy.

  1. Download the latest Azure Virtual Desktop administrative template files and extract the contents of the .cab file and .zip archive.

  2. Copy and paste the terminalserver-avd.admx file to the Group Policy Central Store for your domain, for example \\contoso.com\SYSVOL\contoso.com\Policies\PolicyDefinitions, where contoso.com is your domain name. Then copy the terminalserver-avd.adml file to the en-us subfolder.

  3. Open the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and create or edit a policy that targets your session hosts.

  4. To verify that the Azure Virtual Desktop administrative template is available, browse to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Azure Virtual Desktop. You should see policy settings for Azure Virtual Desktop available for you to configure, as shown in the following screenshot:

    Screenshot of the Group Policy Management Editor showing Azure Virtual Desktop policy settings.

  5. Once you've configured settings, apply the policy to your session hosts, then restart your session hosts for the settings to take effect.

Next steps

Learn how to use the administrative template with the following features: