Evaluator's Guide to the Advanced Admin Console

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Evaluators Guide to the Advanced

Admin Console 2011 Beta for Windows

Home Server 2011 and Windows SmallBusiness Server 2011 Essentials

Author: Andreas Miceli

Published: February 2011

Version: 2

AbstractThis Evaluators Guide serves as the feature documentation for the Advanced Admin Console 2011

Beta for Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials.

For latest information visithttp://www.home-server-addins.com
http://www.home-server-addins.com/http://www.home-server-addins.com/http://www.home-server-addins.com/


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ContentsAbstract ................................................................................................................................................... 1

Installation ............................................................................................................................................... 3

Overview.................................................................................................................................................. 3

About the Explorer Tab ....................................................................................................................... 4

About the Web Browser Tab ............................................................................................................... 4

The user interface in detail ...................................................................................................................... 5

Address bar .......................................................................................................................................... 5

Tool bar................................................................................................................................................ 5

Explorer Tab tool bar buttons ......................................................................................................... 5

Web browser tool bar buttons ........................................................................................................ 5

Task panel ............................................................................................................................................ 6

Home location and home page ............................................................................................................... 7

Favorite management ............................................................................................................................. 7

Adding a new Favorite ......................................................................................................................... 8

Organizing Favorites ............................................................................................................................ 9

More Favorite options ....................................................................................................................... 10

Web browser status bar ........................................................................................................................ 11

Changes since the Technical Preview .................................................................................................... 11

Known issues and limitations ................................................................................................................ 11


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InstallationThe installation of the Advanced Admin Console AddIn (AAC) is done by following the general AddIn

installation procedure as outlined in the documentation for Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011

and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials. You need to have your server set up and at least

one client PC connected to it (i.e. installed the Server Client Connector software on it). AAC can then

be installed by double clicking the .wssx package on the client machine and following the AddIn

installation wizard.

OverviewAAC integrates into the Dashboard as a top-level tab with two sub-tabs (Explorer and Web

browser):

Explorer sub-tab


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Web browser sub-tab

The sub-tab display area is divided into four sections:

1. Address bar2. Tool bar3. Task panel4. Content area

About the Explorer Tab

The Explorer Tab embeds a basic version of the Windows Explorer right into the Dashboard. This

enables users to explore the servers hard drives and logical volumes, use administrative areas of the

servers operating system (e.g. Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Server Management etc.) andlaunch programs and tools installed on the server. (Technical note: Like with the Dashboard any

program launched from AAC will be running on the server and its user interface will be presented to

the users client PC via RemoteApp).

About the Web Browser Tab

The Web browser Tab embeds a basic version of Windows Internet Explorer right into the

Dashboard. This enables users to access the web interface of devices and services present in their

network (e.g. routers, WiFi access points, hardware firewalls, NAS-devices etc.). Since the Dashboardcan be accessed via Remote Web Access from outside the local network over the internet, users can

access these web interfaces without having to expose their devices and services to the internet.


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The user interface in detail

Address bar

The Explorer Tabs address bar displays the path of the current Explorer location and gives simple

backward/forward navigation capability similar to what is found in Windows Explorer.

The Web browser Tabs address bar displays the URL of the web page currently displayed. Users can

enter a URL to navigate to. The address bar also gives simple backward/forward navigation

capabilities and also keeps track of all URLs visited during the active Dashboard session. These URLs

can be accessed by clicking the drop-down arrow of the address bar.

Tool bar

The Explorer Tab and Web browser Tab both feature tool bars which contain common tools and give

access to management features of AAC.

Common tool bar buttons

Refreshes the current view

Navigates to the home location or sets the current location as the new home

location.

Brings up the Add toFavorites menu (see Favorite management)

Displays the Organize Favorites window (see Favorite management)

Brings up the Task panel (see Favorite management)

Explorer Tab tool bar buttons

Opens the current location in a new Explorer window

Displays the Folder options window (see Known limitations below)

Web browser tool bar buttons

Cancels navigation

Opens the current web page in a new browser window

Opens the current web page on the client PC

(not available when connected via Remote Web Access)


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Displays the Internet options window

Task panel

The Task panel contains a collection of commonly used locations and tools for server administrationand management. Once hidden, users can bring the Task panel up again by clicking the Favorites

button on the toolbar. The panel is divided in two sections presented to the user as tabs:

Tasks Favorites


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The Tasks tab contains a categorized, non-customizable collection of tools for quick access. Note that

this collection differs slightly between Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business

Server 2011 Essentials (On Home Server the list contains HomeGroup which is not available for SBS.

On SBS the list contains links to the Active Directory Administrative Center and Group Policy

Management (both not available for Home Server).

The Favorites tab contains a fully-customizable collection of the users Internet Explorer Favorites

stored on the server (Technical note: For Windows Home Server 2011 the Dashboard is always run

from Administrator account on the server. For SBS 2011 Essentials each user account on the server

can be configured to be an administrator and the Dashboard is run from the respective user

account.)

Users can customize the list of Favorites by either using AAC (see Favorite management) or by using

Internet Explorer on the server.

Clicking a task item or Favorite activates the respective AAC sub-tab (Explorer or Web browser) and

navigates to the selected location. When an item represents a program (e.g. Task Manager) it is

opened in a new window. The Task panel is automatically hidden after an item is clicked. You can

prevent the Task panel from automatically hiding by clicking the dock button in the upper right

corner of the panel.

Navigation tip: When holding down the SHIFT-key while clicking on an item it will be opened in a new

window, even if the item represents a folder or web page. When connected from a client PC, holding

down the ALT-key while clicking on a Favorite will open it on the client PCs web browser (only true if

the Favorite represents a web page).

Home location and home pageBoth the Explorer Tab and the Web browser Tab display default content (= the home location/home

page) when the Dashboard is launched.

By selecting Set current location as homefrom the Home-buttons drop down menu ( ) the

currently displayed location (Explorer Tab) or page (Web browser Tab) can be set as the new home

for the respective tab:

Favorite managementAs discussed above the Favorites on the Task panel represent the Internet Explorer Favorites stored

on the server. This enables users to switch back and forth between AAC, Internet Explorer andRemote Desktop sessions. In each of these server administration scenarios they will have their list of

Favorites at hand. Favorites can be either managed by using AAC or Internet Explorer.


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Adding a new Favorite

Clicking the New Favorite button ( ) on the tool bar will bring up the Add to Favorites menu:

Add current location brings up a wizard for adding the current Explorer location or Web browser

location as a Favorite:

The user can enter a name for the shortcut (Favorite) and the folder where it should be created.

Add new shortcut first prompts the user to select a folder where the new shortcut should be

created. After that the Windows Create shortcut wizard is launched, which lets the user select the

target and name of the shortcut. The shortcut target can be a document (e.g. a log file, a saved

Management Console Workspace (.msc) etc.), an executable (e.g. an .exe, batch file (.bat, .cmd) etc.)

or a folder. Generally speaking, the target can be anything you can create shortcuts for in Windows.


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Add new web link brings up a wizard for adding a URL as a Favorite:

The URL must be fully qualified, starting with the protocol scheme name (i.e. http://, https:/ or

ftp://).

Organizing Favorites

Clicking the Organize Favorites button ( ) on the tool bar will display Internet Explorers

Organize Favorites window:


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From here, users can create new folders and move, rename or delete Favorites just as they can do in

Internet Explorer.

More Favorite options

Right-clicking a Favorite or folder on the Favorites tab will bring up the Favorite context menu:

A Favorite can be renamed or deleted by clicking the respective menu item. By selecting the

Properties item the Windows property window for the Favorite will be displayed. This enables users

to change the options of the selected Favorite (like the URL, target, command line arguments etc.).


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Web browser status bar

The status bar on the Web browser tab displays two status icons on its far right:

The padlock icon reflects the SSL status of the current web page. When the current page was

retrieved over an encrypted (i.e. SSL) channel, the icon is enabled. Clicking the icon will display the

certificate information window.

Since the Enhanced Security Configuration for Internet Explorer is enabled by default on the server

operating system, browsing web and intranet sites is very likely to produce a lot of security warning

dialogs. Users can disable these dialogs by clicking the alerts icon on the status bar. When the icon is

grayed out alerts are disabled. Note:Disabling security alerts does not disable the web browsers

security features. It may cause navigation to fail silently since it suppresses the display of security

alerts.

Changes since the Technical PreviewThe following features have been implemented since the previous technical preview release:

Home location for Explorer tab and home page for the web browser tab. Full Favorite integration with the Windows shell/Internet Explorer

Changes to Favorites are automatically reflected by the Favorite tree on the Favorite tab.

This works, no matter which way is used to modify a Favorite.

Favorite context menu: Rename Favorite context menu: Delete User view preferences are implicitly saved and restored in a subsequent Dashboard session:

Task panel visibility, splitter position, web browser alert setting.

New tasks added: Resource Monitor, Reliability Monitor, Remote Connection Task, 'Run' Automatic check for AAC updates. FIXED: The certificate properties window was displayed as a dialog, thus blocking the

Dashboard UI. This violated the Dashboard UI model guidelines.

Known issues and limitationsSince the Dashboard runs as RemoteApp on the server, not all functionality of the Windows shell is

available. Because of that, the Folder options window cannot be opened from AAC when running

the Dashboard from a client PC (it however works when running the Dashboard in a Remote Desktopsession). This may be true for other Windows shell functionalities as well. The Run task is only

available in Remote Desktop sessions for the same reason.


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The following issues may be fixed in future releases of AAC:

When running the Dashboard from a client PC (as RemoteApp) resizing the Dashboardwindow may result in improper drawing of the AAC portion of the Dashboard window. Theroot cause for this issue is yet to be determined.

Evaluator's Guide to the Advanced Admin Console

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