Microsoft enhances its Office applications for use in virtualized environments. The new features are available to enterprise customers.
To optimize the use of Office apps in virtual environments, Microsoft has fully integrated the container technology of FSLogix into Office 365. Microsoft took over FSLogix in November last year.
This technology enhances the speed and reliability of virtualized office apps to match the experience of using office apps on a physical computer, it sounds in an announcement.
The functionality is made available free of charge to customers with one of the following licenses:
- Microsoft 365 E3/E5/A3/A5/Student Use Benefits/F1/Business
- Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5
- Windows 10 Education A3/A5
- Windows 10 VDA per user
- Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Client Access License (CAL) and Subscriber Access License (SAL)
More new features
Microsoft also announced a handful of other new features for virtualized office apps:
- Windows Server 2019 will support OneDrive Files On-Demand for virtualized Office apps users in the coming months.
- Microsoft supports Office 365 ProPlus on Windows Server 2019.
- Improvements to Outlook Cached Mode help users who run Outlook on a virtual desktop to get faster access to email and calendar.
- OneDrive now offers a computer-by-computer setup option that allows people to share one installation of the OneDrive app while still keeping their own individual folders and files as if they were on their own device.
- Teams also has a machine by machine installation option for Chat and Collaboration. In the coming months, Calling and Meetings in Teams will be offered in collaboration with Citrix. Microsoft plans additional improvements for Teams, including improved app deployment, Windows Virtual Desktop support, performance enhancements, and optimized caching for non persistent setups.
- An index per user in Windows Search allows each user profile to keep its own search index, so that the search is fast and individualized.