Windows 365 updates | AI‑Ready Work, Apps on Demand, Resilient Access
Automate real work, modernize app delivery, and keep users productive from any device with Windows 365 for Agents. Assign AI agents their own Cloud PCs to complete tasks in your apps and workflows using natural-language instructions to eliminate fragile UI-based automation and accelerate scalable, resilient processes across your organization. Publish individual Cloud Apps instead of full desktops to simplify management, modernize legacy applications, and deliver consistent experiences to any device. And if a device breaks, is lost, or needs repair, Windows 365 Reserve lets you instantly provide users with a secure, temporary Cloud PC, restoring productivity in minutes while reducing IT overhead. Scott Manchester, Windows 365 Vice President, joins Jeremy Chapman to show how you can streamline automation, app delivery, and business continuity with the latest Windows 365 updates. Publish just the apps users need. Across any device, with consistent settings and security, no full desktops required. Take a look at Windows 365 Cloud Apps Deliver cloud-hosted apps seamlessly. Simplify migrations and enable flexible access. Check out Windows 365 Cloud Apps. Provision, use, and return business-ready Cloud PCs in minutes. Restore productivity fast with Windows 365 Reserve. Get started. QUICK LINKS: 00:00 — Updates for Cloud PCs with Windows 365 00:47 — Computer-using agents 02:27 — Build a computer-using agent 04:46 — Managing Windows 365 for Agents 05:26 — Windows 365 Cloud Apps 08:16 — Access published Cloud Apps in Windows 365 09:53 — Windows 365 Reserve 11:13 — Provisioning 12:24 — Deprovision and Self-Provision 13:12 — Wrap up Link References Check out https://aka.ms/windows365blog Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft’s official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. 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Followed by Cloud app support, where as you work, the service can now deliver just the app window, not the entire desktop, as Windows 365 Cloud Apps managed by Microsoft Intune. And if you've ever needed a temporary business-ready PC as a short term backup device, now there's a new option to solve for this too. Joining me today is Scott Manchester, once again, he leads the Windows 365 development team. Welcome back. - Thanks Jeremy, great to be back. - So there's a lot to cover today, There's Windows 365 for Agents, we've also got Cloud Apps and Reserve. Why don't we start with something brand new though, AI that can be used with Windows 365 as a desktop environment. - Sure, and this is a totally new type of AI called computer-using agents or CUA. With Windows 365 for Agents, you can assign an agent a Cloud PC to provide access to the apps and resources it needs to do a job, just as you would a person, and we're building an agent-ready platform with Windows 365 to make that possible. Now let's say you want an agent to do an expense report for employees. As an admin, you can create a pool of Cloud PCs which are ready for the agent to use to complete jobs. Each Cloud PC in the pool would have the Expense app pre-installed in addition to being connected to the network to get the resource it needs. Now this way, when a user invokes the agent with instruction, the agent will first send a request to get a Cloud PC from the pool for its task. This gives the agent what it needs to do the job. From there, it can get to work, reasoning over receipts from the travel database, extracting details, and entering them into the Expense app for you. Importantly, as a human user, you can see and even interact with the agent as needed in real time to unblock its path to completing a task, even taking over when required, leaving the agent to pick up where it left off and finish the job. At the end, it will circle back to you and confirm that it has completed its task and we'll check in the Cloud PC, returning it back to the pool so that it's ready for the next user request that might come. Desktop automation tasks can be formed using your installed apps or even websites via browser. - So how easy is it then as a maker to use Windows 365 and build a computer-using agent? - It's super simple, Jeremy. We provide a built-in workflow for you to design, test and deploy computer-using agents to run securely on Cloud PCs. Let me give you an example, to automate the discovery of public RFPs to submit bids on open work. In Microsoft Copilot Studio, as an agent maker, to build one from scratch, you click on Create Computer Using Agent. This sets up a Windows 365 for Agents environment for it to use. In the next step, I've already pasted in the automation instructions to save time. These instructions are in natural language, the same way I described them to a person on my team. Now next I need to add the rest of the details, like the agent name and description. For this agent, I can skip down to machines, where instead of a hosted browser, I'll choose the right Cloud PC pool. That's really all that's needed to set everything up. And just to make sure that your instructions provide the right level of detail, you can test it out at any time. You just need to click the Test button. That establishes the connection to the Windows 365 for Agents Cloud PC. And you can see as it walks through the steps outlined in your instructions. We can see that it's opening Edge, then navigating to the public notice site, then entering energy as a search term, then narrowing down the date and grabbing the lines of data it needs, then it closes the browser. Now that did exactly what was instructed. Once happy with the results, you can publish the agent and move on to automating when it runs using triggers. For example, in this case, I'll trigger it to run two times per day and triggering the frequency is fully adjustable. Now of course, you can continue to refine and iterate on the agent and what it does, add tasks or change the automation trigger as needed. And once everything has been running for a while, you can see the activities performed during each run. And clicking into one shows you the logic of how it's run, including timings per step and with Transcript, you can even see screenshots for each step that was taken in the process. - It was great to see how easy that was to do and build, you know, using pretty simple instructions, you know, versus I think the traditional way that a lot of us are used to, which is coordinate based automation, which is a lot less resilient to UI changes. So what does IT need to configure then to get everything to work? - Well, everything can be done right in Intune. This is the one place where you can manage all of your physical desktops, mobile devices, as well as your Cloud PCs. For example, you can make sure that Windows 365 for Agents Cloud PC pools are governed using new or existing policies. Additionally, billing elements are managed using the Power Platform admin center. - So it's great to see that configuring and managing Windows 365 for Agents is really consistent with the other Windows 365 workflow. So why don't we switch gears though to something else I think a lot of people are pretty excited about, which is Cloud Apps. So how should we think of those? - Right, this is a new capability with a number of advantages. First, by using Windows 365 Cloud Apps, you can now deliver individual app windows instead of the full desktop. And second, this is the first full SaaS app publishing solution that uses the same tools that you use today to manage the rest of your devices. Let me show you. In the Intune Admin Center from the Windows 365 page, you'll start with a provisioning policy. I'll give mine a name, Zava Cloud Apps. Now the experience control here is what triggers the app-only view, and this setting makes a few downstream decisions in the policy as well. Importantly, the license type was set to frontline, and these don't need to be just for frontline users, it can work for anyone in your organization. And the frontline mode was also set to shared, the other options are grayed out and disabled. Then, like any provisioning policy, you can add join type details, network, geography, region, and single sign-on preferences. And from there, you can choose the image and I'll use the gallery image with the Microsoft 365 apps pre-installed. Now let me pause for a second to explain a few things in the Configuration tab. First is the Windows Autopilot device preparation policy. This is what you'll use to add additional apps and configurations into a shared Cloud PC, and these will be installed before the users can connect to the Cloud Apps. I'll select this one for Zava. We've also added a new option for user experience sync and you can choose user storage size allocations. Now this is just for the user specific app data and not the entire user profile, so this 4 gig option should be more than enough. Now remember this is a non-persistent pool of Cloud PCs, so you could be assigned a different Cloud PC each time you launch an app. So this setting will sync user app data and key window settings for consistent experiences as people are assigned different underlying Cloud PCs. From there you have the options to define tags, and then, assign the right groups for who will be in scope for this provisioning policy. I'll pick the Zava LT in this case. Then I'll select my Cloud PC size and I'll choose this frontline spec, add the assignment name and two for the number of Cloud PCs. Then I just need to confirm, and that's it. By the way, if you launch more than one app from a Cloud PC derived using the same provisioning policy, all of those apps will run in the same Cloud PC instance. And now there's just one more step, which is deciding which apps inside of those Cloud PCs should be surfaced to the users in that group. From the Windows 365 management, you'll use the all Cloud Apps tab. These are all of the detected apps in the running Cloud PCs. To publish another app, you can select one or more here that are ready to publish and just hit the Publish button on top. And the apps then will be available to anyone in that group. And this is also ideal for migrating on-premises apps to the Cloud to reduce complexity. - Right, so it's a lot of flexibility and it's pretty simple to set up compared to other options. Why don't we explain though how users then would access those published Cloud Apps? - Well, the good news is that these work across any device you use and there are a few ways to access them, in fact, since you're a member of the group, why don't we take a look at this experience on your laptop? - Sounds good, so here I'm actually running a Windows device, but it could be a Mac or a mobile device as well. So, first, from the Windows app, you can get to all of your Windows 365 Cloud Apps and your Cloud PCs, and the Windows app works on macOS, iOS, Android, and, of course, Windows like you're seeing here. And there's now a new Apps page where you can access published apps. You can also access Cloud Apps, by the way, from the browser as well. There are also a few more integrations specific to Windows. So if I open up start, I can see the Cloud Apps that are pinned in my start menu and each one of these show my company name and also my work email. And if I open one, it looks like a local app that I can move around, I can resize it, the window has rounded corners so it's seamless. Additionally, because it's got user experience sync enabled, the app theme is consistent and I'm signed in with my Microsoft 365 work account so I can access my work resources and I'm ready to go. So just to compare this, if I open up a local browser window, you can see that they look almost identical, except the local one as you can see is running ARM64 because this is a Copilot+ PC and the Cloud app window is running Edge with X64 or 64-bit. And as we saw, it's just the app window and not the entire desktop, so it's seamless. So now why don't we move on to Windows 365 Reserve? I know you and I have done a lot of desktop support over the years and it's not so fun when say a managed user machine breaks, then we have to go into the storage room, we've got to potentially re-image and patch that device and give it back to that person in a business-ready state while we repair their PC. This process got a lot more complicated as people started to work more hybrid these days. - Exactly. Well, we're making things a lot easier now. With Windows 365 Reserve, we help remove that pain. You can quickly give your users 10 days of temporary Cloud PC access from any device anywhere for just $20 per user per year in the US. Now it's easy to set up and fast to deploy when you need it. Ideal for those scenarios when a machine breaks, it helps you get the user productive again as soon as possible without compromising security. Now again, from Windows 365 management, I'll create a simple provisioning policy. Add the name and choose Reserve as the license type. It's simpler because we've streamlined the options. You just need to choose a geography and language settings. It uses the Microsoft network and machines need to be interjoined. Images available are gallery images and are automatically kept up to date. Now I'll keep what's here, then finally you'll add the groups you want to assign the Reserve licenses to. Now you have Windows 365 Reserve set up and later once a user needs a temporary Cloud PC, back in Intune using the provisioning policy that I created before, under the Cloud PC Users tab, we can see that your account, Jeremy, is already provisioned. To do another, I can choose another account, mine in this case, then confirm using the provisioning button. Now this is accessible for users with a Windows app or browser on any device and it has all of your apps, configurations, and security policies ready to go. And it normally takes a few moments to complete, but since you're already provisioned, why don't you show this experience from your laptop again? - Sure, so it's already available on my device. Last time I was showing the Apps tab. So in the Windows app, I can see there's a Reserve Cloud PC and I can see the number of days that are available to use it or my deadline in this case. And I still have nine days remaining. So when I connect, you'll see the Reserve instance is fully business ready, it's got all of my apps and things that I need. And once I no longer need the Reserve Cloud PC, right back from the Windows app, I could return it myself to save the eight remaining days that I have left, but I won't just yet. This means that I can now access my work environment if I ever need it securely from any device. That said, Scott, what if a user like me in my case didn't return that Cloud PC back? - Well, that can happen occasionally. In that case, as an admin, you can also return the Reserve Cloud PC on behalf of your user. From the provisioning policy, you just need to select the Cloud PC instance. Then deprovision now to confirm and keep the remainder of the days left for the user's reserve instance. And we're working on a self-help option from the Windows app so that an authorized user can self-provision a Reserve Cloud PC on their own when they need it. And this will save admin's time and avoid unnecessary support calls. - And I can see this really coming in handy for things like cybersecurity incidents, device loss or repair, and a lot more, and these are all really big updates. - Yeah, and there's a lot more to come, Jeremy. We'll continue to see more convergence between the AI and desktop experiences, so watch this space. - So where can people who are watching right now find out more with everything you've shown today? - Easy. To learn more, check out aka.ms/windows365blog for all the updates. - Thanks so much for joining us today, Scott, and thank you for joining us as well. Now be sure to subscribe to Microsoft Mechanics for all the updates and we'll see you again soon.
