My name is David Bélanger, and I’m a program manager on the Remote Desktop team working on Remote Desktop apps. Back in April, we released the first version of the Microsoft Remote Desktop Preview app for Windows Phone 8.1 and we’ve been adding new features ever since.
First, I want to say thank you for all the great feature requests you’ve added and voted for on our new uservoice site. Please keep the feedback coming as it will help us ensure we are building the app you want to use for your daily remote desktop tasks.
As we continue working on popular enterprise features like Gateway, RemoteApp and Desktop Connections and the new Microsoft Azure RemoteApp service due later this year, our updates will include a few other features. With that said, this blog highlights the changes we’ve made to the app which will be available from the Windows Phone Store later today.
Cortana integrationTo get started with Cortana , the Windows Phone personal assistant, we’ve added voice commands allowing you to quickly connect to a desktop you’ve previously added by using the display name (the name that appears on the desktop thumbnail in the "desktops" page).
- Remote desktop connect to <display name> or
- Remote desktop to <display name>
For example, if your Connection Center looks like the one below, you could give Cortana the following commands:
- “Remote desktop connect to DAVID dash PC”
- “Remote desktop to my work PC”
Figure 1: Example of a Connection Center showing the display names.
Have some thoughts on cool ways we could integrate more deeply with Cortana? We’d love to see new suggestions on our feature request site.
Phone will remain unlocked while in a remote desktop sessionAnother change we made based on the feature requests we received is to prevent the phone from locking while in a remote desktop session. This will make it easier to monitor a PC over a long period of time.
Try it nowWhether you are the owner of a new Windows Phone 8.1 device or have upgraded your existing Windows Phone 8 device to the Developer Preview version, I encourage you to download the Remote Desktop Preview app from the Windows Phone store today and enjoy the rich Windows experience on your Windows Phone 8.1 device.
The Remote Desktop app is also available on your other devices ( Windows 8.1 , iOS , Mac OS X , and Android ).
Stay tuned for future updates as we work on adding Microsoft Azure RemoteApp support and more enterprise-focused features including Remote Desktop Gateway, RD Connection Broker, and Remote Resources (RemoteApp and Desktop Connections) later this year.
Note: Questions and comments are welcome. However, please DO NOT post a request for troubleshooting by using the comment tool at the end of this post. Instead, post a new thread in the Remote Desktop clients forum . Thank you!