The Remote Web Workplace Vista Gadget

Here’s a little bit of extra goodness for those of you wanting to run Vista within your SBS 2008 environment.  Ever wanted to put something else on your sidebar?  Check out the SBS Vista Gadget below.  When you join a client to your SBS domain we push this gadget down to the client.  Once you add the gadget you get some pretty cool features.

Let’s take a look what this does from a user perspective.

1. No requirement for users to remember the Remote Web Workplace URL
2. Access to published links (I’ll show you how to do this further down)
3. Simple access to the Companyweb SharePoint Site
4. One click access to Outlook Web Access (OWA)

Why is all of this so cool?  Well, we learnt that one of the pain points found by SBs is the complexity in remembering all of those links.  This gadget really goes a long way in making that simple.

But wait there is still more.  I bet your thinking “Can I add other items to this gadget?”, the answer is YES.

All of these links come from the Remote Web Workplace, link set up page, so you can easily add other links to your gadget (or RWW for that matter).  The next time the group policy updates your gadget will get a refresh.

To customize these links:

• Open the SBS 2008 admin console

• Select Remote Web Workplace and Click view site properties

• The dialog box above should appear, then click home page links

• Click Manage Links

• You can then add a new link by typing the link description and address and then clicking add.  Ok all of the Windows and there you have it.  You’ve customized RWW and the Vista Gadget.

There you have it!