Since the start of the term the AppHub service has been used to distribute applications to all Managed Desktop workstations.

This is a new service that can deliver applications to workstations without the need for them to be installed in the traditional manner so allowing applications to be more widely available and has been well recieved by staff and students.

There are currently 80 applications available within the service, with about 1700 connections to the service each day, though this is steadily growing.

We intend to add more applications throughout the year and to extend the service.

Application Usage

Most Used

Most launched

Further information

For further information about AppHub and useful information about how to get the most out of AppHub see:

https://go.shu.ac.uk/apphub

After successful User Acceptance Testing for software updates before distribution, we are currently distributing Google Chrome 54.0.2840.59 to SHU Managed Desktop workstations.

This update has been released in order to resolve critical flaws with the previous version. It will only install when the workstation is at the ctrl-alt-del login screen.

One thing that has changed is that the Pepper Flash plugin is no longer installed as part of Chrome; it is downloaded automatically when a user visits a Flash enabled site, and installed in their user profile. This may mean that a user needs to refresh the page for the content to play after the plugin has installed.

The 2016 /17 Managed Desktop image is now available for use within SHU which is an incremental update to the MD2015 image.

Although there are no major updates to software this year so IE, Microsoft Office and Java are remaining the same last year, we have removed Apple QuickTime from the image.

The updates applied for MD2016 include:

• Uninstalled CDBurnerXP application
• Uninstalled Apple QuickTime
• Installed Cisco Jabber 11.6.0
• Installed Adobe Reader Update DC2015.010.20056
• Installed Google Chrome 51.0.2704.103
• Installed Flash Player 22.0.0.192
• Installed FileOpen Plugin B971
• Updated Java 1.8 to Java 1.8 Update 91
• Installed .NET Framework 4.6.1
• Installed Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Re-distributables for x86 and x64
• Set environment variable _MENUVER to MD2016
• Set environment variable _PATCH to 36
• Set environment variable _VERSION to MD2016

After successful User Acceptance Testing for software updates before distribution, we are currently distributing Cisco Jabber 11.5.1 and Plantronics Hub 3.7 to SHU Managed Desktop workstations.

For Office workstations this update will remove any install Jabber and the hub software, with Jabber first and the Hub software afterwards.

The Unified Comms team have requested that this is distributed due to this combination of Jabber and Plantronics Hub resolving existing issues that are affecting some staff, supporting new devices, providing new features and resolving critical flaws in the software.

The update will only install when the workstation is at the ctrl+alt+del login screen.

Lab workstations will not get the update until after the exams have finished, and the Plantronics Hub software is not installed on Lab workstations.

After successful MD UAT Testing we have released MD2015 workstation Patch 32, which is the second patch for MD2015 workstations.
This will be a phased rolled out, starting with Lab workstations.

Patch-32 will run whether or not a user is logged in and will do the following:

• Switch the monitor off after 9 minutes for power consumption
• Automatically switch Lec PCs off from 22:00
• Set _Patch to 32

Due to Apple removing support for the Windows version of QuickTime and not fixing current issues it strongly recommended by Apple and US-CERT that QuickTime is uninstalled from computer systems.

We will be strongly recommending that this is done for future versions of Managed Desktop and where possible we will be contacting staff who use files that require QuickTime and working to find alternative media players.

There is a possibility that we could consider using QuickTime via Application Jukebox for any files that must use QuickTime, but this could cause a number of issues.

File types that currently use Quicktime within MD7
.AAC
.ac3
.aif
.aifc
.aiff
.amc
.AMR
.cdda
.dif
.dv
.gsm
.m3u
.m4a
.m4b
.m4p
.m4v
.mac
.mov
.mp2
.mp4
.mpa
.mpg
.pct
.pic
.pict
.plist
.pnt
.pntg
.qht
.qhtm
.qpa
.qt
.qti
.qtif
.qtl
.qtp
.qtr
.qts
.qtx
.sdp
.smi
.smil

After successful User Acceptance Testing for software updates before distribution, we are currently distributing Google Chrome 50.0.2661.75 to SHU Managed Desktop workstations.

This update has been released in order to resolve critical flaws with the previous version. It will only install when the workstation is at the ctrl-alt-del login screen.

We have released an updated MD2015 today which has the following updates over the previous release, which was released in January:

• Latest Microsoft OS Security updates (since January 2016)
• Installed Cisco Jabber 11.5.1.29337
• Installed Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office Runtime 2010 version 10.0.60724
• Installed Java 1.8 Update 73 x86 JRE
• Installed Java 1.8 Update 73 x64 JRE
• Installed Google Chrome 48.0.2564.116
• Installed Flash Player 20.0.0.306
• Copied updated Desktop and Laptop power settings file to C:\SHU\Powersettings
• Added RemoveDrivers.ps1 script to delete unnecessary drivers from workstation to C:\SHU\Scripts
• Installed Microsoft Hotfixes to support NVMe disks
• Set _PATCH to 32

This image has updated device drivers, including for the Skylake chipset devices.

After successful User Acceptance Testing for software updates before distribution, we are currently distributing Adobe Flash Player 21.0.0.213 and Google Chrome 49.0.2623.112 to SHU Managed Desktop workstations.

These updates have been released in order to resolve critical flaws with the previous versions. They will only install when the workstation is at the ctrl-alt-del login screen.

After successful User Acceptance Testing for software updates before distribution, we are currently distributing Java 1.8 Update 73 to SHU Managed Desktop workstations.

This update will remove any existing Java JRE and replace it Java 1.8 Update 73.

This update has been released in order to resolve critical flaws with previous versions of Java.
We are aware that some applications do not work with Java 1.8 and areas such as HR and FD will not use 1.8 until these issues are resolved.

The update will only install when the workstation is at the ctrl+alt+del login screen.

The rollout will begin with Adsetts and then progress through other areas of the University until all workstations have the update.