New 'Enterprise Features' Macro Component
If you haven't installed the Windows Embedded Standard Community Technology Preview (CTP) that was available on 6/2/08 then you're missing out on a lot of new stuff. New features have been added, existing features enhanced, improvements made to both the developer scenarios as well as the device scenarios.
One improvement made to the developer scenario is a new 'Enterprise Features' macro component; in the CTP build available for download you can find this component in Target Designer's category: Software | Test & Development. The development of this component came about from feedback received over the years from developers looking for assistance to help ensure their devices would 'just work' when plugged into an enterprise environment. Typical devices could be, but certainly not limited to, Thin Clients, Point of Sale, Kiosks, Multi Function Printers and more.
The goal of this component is to provide you with the most common options typically added to a configuration in Target Designer for the enterprise like Active Directory, WMI, Print subfeatures, LDAP, Networking, Smartcard subsystem, etc...These are all exposed through configurable UI so you can review the list and pick and choose what's appropriate for your device or not. Or if you're not sure, and if you're not footprint constrained simply add all the components and you greatly increase the odds of your device plugging in almost seamlessly to that enterprise environment.
Another piece of feedback we've received for large macro components is that dumping a long laundry list of feature components into the macro and then exposing them in configurable UI sometimes makes life a little more challenging for the developer. That's because you may have dozens of components to sift through in the flat list making it confusing and challenging to find the component of interest in that list.
To help resolve that issue we're trying something new with the config ui starting with this new component. We've grouped the components in the macro into Windows feature groups. For instance, a lot of the networking features are grouped into a 'Network' group, click the 'show' link next to 'Network' and it'll expand the list to show everything from Infrared Support to Netshell to IPX/SPX.
The list of categories in the config ui that contain components range from Active Directory to WSUS, each category contains from one to a dozen plus components.
So I encourage you to check out the CTP, examine the Enterprise Features components and let us know if we're missing something or if it looks like it'll meet your needs.
Got feedback on the CTP build? You could visit this link to join the chat next week, or you can leave feedback via the connect site linked up top or you can even post a thread on the Windows Embedded Standard MSDN forum.
- Andy