Designing and Implementing Environment Manager Personalization

The following points are recommendations for the design and implementation of Environment Manager User Personalization.

  • Install the Personalization Database and Personalization Server on separate devices (physical or virtual).
  • Where possible, install the Personalization Database with High Availability in mind. Typically for this, clustering of the Microsoft SQL Server is recommended.
  • When required, Personalization Servers will support Network Load Balancing being placed in front of the servers.
  • For multiple Environment Manager sites or data centers, it is recommended that Personalization Servers and Databases are installed on these sites and local clients pointed to their local Personalization Server and Databases. This reduces performance issues across WAN links.

Personalization Server and client compatibility
Earlier versions of Environment Manager Personalization Server and Windows client to be from the same software release in order to connect. The Environment Manager 2021.3 provides a long-term service release (LTSR) of Personalization Server and so removes this mandatory alignment. Any update or compatibility requirements are documented in the Release Notes supplied with your software.

Setting Up a Personalization Configuration

The following steps outline how to create a basic configuration to manage and migrate existing user data into the Personalization database.

Step 1 Add Personalization Groups

Create the Personalization Groups required for your organization and add membership rules to represent your users.

See Personalization Groups.

Step 2 Configure Application Data Collection

Enable Application Data Collection to passively gather registry and folder usage data for the applications your users have run.

It is recommended that Application Data Collection is disabled when no longer required.

See Application Data Collection.

Step 3 Add Application Groups and Windows Settings Groups

Use the collected data to create managed Application Groups to manage the applications within your organization.

Add Windows Settings Groups to manage the settings users apply to their endpoints.

See Application Personalization and Windows Personalization.

Step 4 Enable Profile Migration

Use Profile Migration to import data from existing user profiles.

See Profile Migration.