How to use the Army Virtual Desktop

all right today we're talking about the Army virtual desktop we're going to talk about it in the most simplified terms we're going to start out real easy for all comprehension levels we're going to get you with the quick setup so you could jump right to doing things like checking your email and then we're going to get a little bit more in depth talk about what is the virtual desktop what can you do with it and what are the benefits of having it all right so we're going to start with this onboarding page I'm going to put the link in the description but basically it has the most common steps here which is onboarding this is basically where you're just asking for requesting access to the virtual desktop all right so you're going to hit yes and then it's going to send you an email with the link that link is basically going to take you right here to this setup all right so once it says you're good to go you been accepted you can come back here or you can follow the email and go to setup here it's showing you all the devices that you could install the or access the virtual desktop with but for the sake of this demonstration and the most likely scenario you're going to go with this with this personal corporate devices it's going to be your own computer all right so here for instructions it says to download the Microsoft Remote Desktop click on this link link and here it's going to have some information you're just going to scroll right here to the section that says download and install the remote desktop you're going to look for your operating system most likely your operating system is going to be 64bit if not 32 but we're going to go with 64 it's going to download the file to [Music] install all right if you have you can open it right from here if you happen to lose it or close this browser it's going to be in your downloads folder or we're just going to run it from here all right and you're just going to follow all the standard steps so or the default steps so hit next accept the terms next you're installing it just for you if you have multiple profiles we're just going to go with the default all right so install just for you so it may ask you this if you want to subscribe to the managed apps so you can just click subscribe I have to click subscribe with URL for demonstration purposes because I already set this desktop up and I uninstalled it so I could reinstall it just to demonstrate to you but regardless you're going to use your army email then you're going to sign in with your CAC okay so now we have the remote desktops visible to us all right so it's going to say Arizona Virginia I don't know if these are vpns or this is where the actual data centers are generally with the VPN you want to pick the location that's closer to you I don't think it's actually going to matter in this instance so we're just going to go with Arizona so it's connecting to the desktop now you're going to sign in once again allow it access hit okay and we're in say this is your first time in and it's a fresh layout and you just want to say check your email right at first it's going to look blank like this but for email we have been using Outlook even the Enterprise website was uh application for Outlook all right so Outlook is in here Outlook is what we're going to use to check our email so you could go in the search bar just type in Outlook all right what I'm going to do is right click on this and pin to taskbar so every time we open this we could just open it like this and now we're in our email you can see this is the email that had been sent to me when we check that onboarding link all right and there's other apps you're going to that are installed in here already that you're going to use regularly say you want to use like PowerPoint right you're PowerPoint Ranger pin the test bar say let's see do they have Adobe Acrobat right here right instead of searching for it every single time we're just going to pin it to taskbar and you can do that with every app so then you're going to have all your apps right here so every time you log in they're already chilling right there okay so that's just the basics to get you up and running so we're going to talk about what is a virtual desktop what did I just install on my computer all right so the easiest way to describe it or the easiest way to think about it is it's like a computer within a computer really what it is is a computer that's offsite you operate it from your device your computer you access it via the internet all right so typically your computer has several components CPU which is the brain a memory and the apps and the programs that you're using on there it's all in your office or your home you can see it it's within reach you can see everything that's on the screen with the virtual desktop you're accessing a computer that's somewhere else it's at a dat data center it's on a super computer whatever you want to call it the cloud okay so it has its own dedicated CPU it's Ram its own apps but you can see the interface and you can in input with your mouse and keyboard from your own personal computer all right and you have licensed to access that piece of hardware and those applications that are installed on the virtual computer so essentially the Army has given everybody their own government computer all right with its own operating systems which is Windows right it's loaded with the office the Microsoft Office Suite and modern computer specs so is it a good thing is it a bad thing is this just another change that we're going to dread in my opinion it's a very good thing this is a win for everybody in the Army this is modern technology this is not something that's complet it's new to the Army but it's not completely new people in the civilian world and um jobs and corporations have been using this kind of technology for a while and we're just now getting on board with it all right so what are some of the benefits well first of all it's a separate system let me let me just give let me just show you right here all right so this is showing that you're on the Army desktop this is showing your internet connection but like I said it's you could think of it almost like a computer within a computer all right this is the virtual desktop that I'm resizing and moving around right and this is my own normal desktop okay so here if I click off on this screen this is my personal computer this is my apps right here these are my files you see I got gaming stuff I got editing stuff I got entertainment stuff I got different browsers all that all right now when I'm in here I'm in the virtual desktop it's a complete different system let's look at what they have in here now it says Sergeant now has their apps which is much you know more limited so it's a completely separate system so first of all since it's offsite it's at a data center some where else in the desert probably you can't lose your work your work is stored on here it's on separate Hardware all right so unless you delete it you're not going to lose that work everything I stored on my local computer on my local hardware if my computer were to blow up catch on fire throw bleach on it I would lose that data that's here locally on my personal computer but I wouldn't lose the data that's on the virtual desktop okay plus these virtual desktops these systems the companies that that own the servers that the these are stored on they back them up regularly daily at least all right so if you were to for whatever reason lose your data it's backed up okay I don't know how good you guys are at backing up your normal personal data I'm not very good at it they're good at it okay so also has modern components meaning meaning the hardware that is being used off site is updated regularly I'll give you an example here so this is my system here it's showing I'm on Windows 11 Pro I have a AMD ryzen 5 processor with 32 gigs of RAM okay now let's look at this system has its own software or I'm sorry its own Hardware and software this one has a AMD 64 core processor with 64 gabt of ram so it's hard to compare apples to apples but this computer is no slouch all right so similar to how if you have a phone carrier and you pay for a service where they give you the newest latest iPhone every year it's like that they constantly keep up with the hard your data on there will stay the same and it'll be unchanged but the hardware that this is working off of offsite remotely is updated regularly so you're always going to have the latest and greatest the the latest close to the greatest Hardware that you're working off of all right so you know how normally if you're working on a computer that's on post uh older desktop is going to be slower has a bad internet connection God forbid you were to use you know a government laptop who knows how old that is how many hands it's been on it's slower the drives don't work you actually can't plug any drives to it the internet connection is slow um terrible experience well this you know it's you're working off the latest Hardware also they give you Microsoft 365 so for those of you that don't know you used to use Microsoft Office Products right you'd have Microsoft Office 2000 2005 whatever the year was and you were kind of stuck with that right or one of the applications that come on there like word or PowerPoint or Excel or something so now Microsoft has gone to a subscription based service Microsoft 365 where you pay a monthly subscription you're it's licensed to you specifically and you have access to all the apps all right well here the Army's paid for Microsoft 365 a license for everybody so you have access to all of their apps as far as storage you got your one drive storage here it operates like local filing system right but it's all in the cloud still and one of the things that I like okay so here's here's the thing right the thing about these uh Microsoft products right is that there's some limitations like you cannot download these to your personal computer like if I was showing you this is connected it's not connected to my personal computer but it's on my personal computer I can't save this to my local computer it's only saving within the system the the Army system right the virtual desktop environment I don't know what you want to call it right but however within that Army environment you are not only storing files but you could share files and you could also see other people's files so I don't know if this was done by Design right but say like I'm trying to get some information about something right and anything and I'm trying to go through my unit or I'm trying to look online for information on it right and I'm not too successful with that well I could search on here by keyword and it'll turn up any product that anybody has created or stored on these systems so like say for instance I want to know about master driver training right or or gcss right I'm going go just type in master driver and there's products here that other people at other units have created or if I want to find out how to access gcss I can see a file here that says gcss Army access somebody created this document shows you all the forms and all the classes you need to take pertaining to that now I can file save this locally to the virtual computer and this product is now mine I can reference this anytime I want to so to me I think this was a big Improvement on what we've been doing before getting on Military computers was a pain desktops were old connections were slow borrowing laptops was a pain but now as long as you have internet access and a device and credentials you have a lot more access and if you want to log out just click here on the close button and it will disconnect your remote session

Channel: MilTut

Views: 6,431

Keywords: army, virtual, desktop, how to, computer, military, 2024, 2025, guide, installation, setup, microsoft, azure, word, powerpoint, 365, soldier, teams, email, outlook, unit, remote, new, pc, gaming, sgt, sergeant, cac, reader, alms, atis, tips.guide, tutorial, gcss, ipsaa, mypay, help, how, to, secure, explain, avd

Id: nG511ExogQk

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Mon May 27 2024