With Royal TS 2.2 (currently available as beta) we are proud to introduce the new "Performance View". This type of connection enables you to have a real-time view on your servers using Windows performance counters. This way you can leverage your already configured servers and immediately see how they are performing.

Background: Windows Performance Counters provide detailed information on how an operating system, a service or an application is performing. You can use this data to monitor the system, identify bottlenecks and problems. All current Microsoft operating systems provide this feature.

For more information please visit Performance Counters (Windows) on MSDN.

Creating a "Performance View"

Since we are going to integrate more and more new Connection Types in Royal TS using our plugin architecture we also want to make sure that usability isn't suffering from this. To ensure that, an updated UI for adding new objects was created in Royal TS 2.2:

The green "+" icon in the Home ribbon will lead you to a new “Add Object” dialog which lets you decide what kind of object you want to add to your document. Below you have a dropdown arrow that lets you select the most common object types (no changes here).

You can filter this list to show only connections, tasks, credentials or templates. And most importantly you can just type the name of your favorite connection type and press ENTER to select the first in the on-the-fly filtered list:

The performance connection has the standard properties that are well known already:

But there is one difference to the other connections Royal TS has implemented so far: All existing connections work with a single Computer name/URI as their primary target. Introducing the Performance View we decided to enhance the flexibility to be able to specify multiple Computer Names/URIs for one performance view.

Why?

Just imagine the following scenario: As an administrator you want to see for all 5 webservers of your web-farm how the CPU is doing. Since you can specify "server1;server2;server3;…" this is easy. You may also click on the “…” button next to the Computer Name to enter multiple machines (IPs) in a list. In case you are creating a new performance view, you can also control whether Royal TS should create a single connection containing all machines or create an individual performance view for each specified machine (bulk-add).

The "Counters" page allows you to specify the performance counters you want to see in your performance view as you probably know it from the Windows Performance Monitor:

• Object: this is like the category of a performance counter
• Counter: this is the performance counter
• Instance: some counters can be further drilled down into instances
• Scale: since all counters are shown in the same graph it makes sense sometimes to scale a counter so all can be shown at the same time
• Machine: if you have specified a single host in the "Computer Name" field you find it here, if you specified more, you can select from which host you want to have the counter or if you want to see them all

After adding a counter you can also specify its Color in the graph.

Tip: Please be aware that Royal TS is reading the performance counter probably from a remote host that requires authorization. So configure your security as you used to do with Royal TS to enable this.

In the "Advanced" page, amongst other configurations, you can define how often data is shown and for how long in the past.

In "Display Options" you can fine-tune the performance chart - and most importantly the "Scroll mode":

• "Warp" works like the Performance Monitor of Windows - if the right side of the chart is reached it restarts at the left (loops back to start)
• "Scroll" works like the Windows Task Manager: it "scrolls" the data and always shows you the most current x measure points

In the "Colors" page you fine-tune some colors of the chart and can also set a general Theme for the chart.

Working with a connected "Performance View"

In the ribbon you can further work with the Performance View:

• Pause the sampling for some time
• Show/Hide the counter list at the bottom and the Legend
• Highlight some of the counters (which makes the corresponding graph a bit thicker)
• Export possibilities (HTML, Image in different formats, PDF)

Hint: If you happen to see "" in the Counter List (at the bottom of the graph) this could have two reasons:

• The network latency was too big and the read-attempt was canceled because a timeout happened
• Royal TS has issues reading the Performance Counter because of a wrong computer configuration, wrong performance counters or security.

In both cases Royal TS is not retrying to read this Performance Counter for the next minute . Please see more information in the Log Panel of Royal TS.

In another blog post we will dig deeper into some advanced tips and tricks using performance view templates.

Please download 2.2 beta and test the new performance view:
http://www.royalts.comhttp://www.royalts.comhttp://www.royalts.com/main/Home/Win/Support/Forum/tabid/178/forumid/9/threadid/891/scope/posts/Default.aspx

cheers,
Michael

Version 0.6.4.1 of Royal TSX brings some exciting new features! (and of course also fixes some bugs)
Here are some of them explained in a little more detail than the release notes offer.

Revamped Plugin Management

On the outside, the plugin management property page looks pretty much identical to previous incarnations of it, but the the backend was completely overhauled to support some nice new features.

For starters, the Plugins page now works even when you're offline. In that case, only the "Installed Plugins" page is available and allows you to view and uninstall your currently installed plugins.

Also new in this release is the possibilty to view release notes of the plugin that's about to be installed.

Sorting support

Well, do I really have to explain this one? I guess, a picture speaks more than a thousand words in that case:

KeePass document Support

It's now possible to open KeePass documents in Royal TSX and use the credentials stored in those documents with connections stored in other documents.

For the time being, KeePass document support is read-only, so you can view and access credentials, but can't make any changes to the document. It's however possible to convert a KeePass document to a Royal TSX document by using the "Save As" command. After doing so, you'll be able to do anything you can with a standard Royal TSX document.

Because KeePass support in Royal TSX uses APIs provided by the official KeePass.exe, which is a .NET application, the Mono Framework must be installed and the path to KeePass.exe must be provided.

KeePass support will soon land on Royal TS (for Windows) too, so if you're a KeePass user, we've got you covered!

Bulk-add and Bonjour discovery

The Windows version of Royal TS already had bulk-add, now OS X users can enjoy the same time-saver feature and even get some extras!

Basically, the bulk-add feature works the same as on Windows. When you create a new connection, you can enter multiple hosts in the Computer Name textfield by separating them with semicolons. Now when you hit save, Royal TSX will parse the field and create new connections for every host entered.

Sounds awesome? But we've still got more! :-)

In this version we also provide support for Bonjour discovery.

From Wikipedia: "Bonjour is Apple's implementation of Zero configuration networking (Zeroconf), a group of technologies that includes service discovery, address assignment, and hostname resolution. Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a local network using multicast Domain Name System (mDNS) service records."

So basically, what Bonjour offers, is to locate services that computers offer on the local network without having to know their IP addresses or DNS names.

Here's a screenshot showing what the Bonjour browser in Royal TSX looks like when adding a new SSH connection:

When using Bonjour to bulk-add multiple connections, the Display Name, Computer Name and Port are set automatically. Bonjour discovery is currently available for Terminal and VNC connections.

Contact

We had some very busy weeks and we are still not feature complete for the 2.2 release but we’re getting very close. A lot of “little” things and a lot of bigger things changed and are new. As a reminder, here are the bigger things new in V2.2:

• VNC, External Applications and Plugins
  One of the bigger underlying changes in Royal TS 2.2 is the new plugin architecture which allows you to use different “client-implementations” for the same connection type – if available. For example, VNC connections can be based on UltraVNC or TightVNC and Terminal connections can be based on the Rebex components or on PuTTY. In addition to VNC and PuTTY integration we also provide a way to implement (almost) any external application using the External App connection plugin.
• Office 2013 skin, Windows 8 / Server 2012 RDP 8 improvements, improved logging, etc.
  This blog post describes some subtle changes across the board.
• KeePass document support
  Although the blog post is based on Royal TSX for the Mac, Royal TS 2.2 beta for Windows offers the same functionality and allows you to not only open or import KeePass files, you can even reference KeePass credentials in your connections.
• Introducing the new Performance View
  Also new in 2.2 is the new performance view connection type which allows you to view performance counters for your systems. Especially combined with the very useful template connection feature, this can be a huge life safer to quickly view important counters for your computers you already have in Royal TS configured as RDP connections.

In this blog post, I want to continue with the introduction of new features and improvements. The latest beta, including the release notes can be found here.

Bulk-Add

Some connection types, such as Remote Desktop, already supported bulk-add. We have now enabled bulk-add for all connection types. So for example, if you want to add multiple web page connections with basically the same settings but for each connection a different URL, you just click on the ‘…’ button next to the URL/Computer Name input field:

Depending on the connection type, the Entry Editor may show additional options:

In a Performance view, for example, you are allowed to configure multiple computers for a single connection. If you want to see the CPU for 4 different servers in one performance view (chart), you can choose the Insert Mode “Create a single connection with all entries”. If you want to create 4 separate performance views, one for each server, you can choose “Create a separate connection for each entry” instead.

Also note that supported connection types may show the “Browse Network …” button at the bottom to search for computers in your network or Active Directory.

Bulk-Edit

Ok, there’s nothing really new in bulk-edit, except that we always provide extremely granular (on a per property/settings based) bulk-edit functionality for each object type, out of the box. Royal TS provides many, many settings, screws and gizmos for each object. So we know that it’s of paramount importance for our users to have complete control and the ability to change one or more setting(s) across some or all connections at once.

Since the release of Royal TS V2, we provide a very powerful bulk-edit feature and I encourage everyone to take a look at our bulk-edit screencast.

Improvement of Replacement Tokens

We got several use cases and requests to provide access to settings of the task instead of the context connection. We implemented an enhanced syntax for the tokens to provide this access. Wherever you write “this.” in front of the replacement token name, the token will be resolved from the actual task instead of the context connection.

Example:
When you use $CustomField3$ in a task (for example the Arguments field), the Custom Field 3 value of the connection you execute the task on is used. When you use $this.CustomField3$ instead, the Custom Field 3 value of the task is used.

Remote Desktop Connection Cache Size and Performance Settings

Since the release of Windows 8 / Server 2012 and RDP 8, a couple of things have changed and were added. As already mentioned here, V2.2 includes access to the very same “Remote Actions” as provided by the built-in remote desktop client. Also when using RDP 8, Reconnect is much faster now, as the underlying protocol finally supports reconnect out of the box.

Lots of users are complaining about the higher memory usage when connecting to Server 2012 / Windows 8 using RDP 8. The bad news is, that’s the way it is. The RDP 8 protocol is using bandwidth and memory differently and unfortunately the memory usage is higher – regardless if you use Royal TS or the built-in remote desktop client in Windows.

Anyway, there are a couple of things which can be controlled and Royal TS provides a UI for that:

Note the Cache size at the bottom of the Performance settings page. By default, RDP 8 (including the windows built-in remote desktop client) is using the “Full Cache Size”. RDP 8 is using a different codec and makes much more use of bitmap caching as its predecessor. You can set the cache size to “Small” which may reduce the memory footprint but it will take more bandwidth. If you set it to “Thin Client Mode” you basically disable all codecs other than Win7 SP1 RemoteFX. In general, it’s not very straight forward and to our experience the results are very different depending on what is displayed on the remote desktop. It seems that under the hood there’s much more going on and it’s not very easy to predict memory usage using RDP 8.

One other thing we noticed is that different “performance flags” (which are represented by all those checkboxes) and also selecting the connection speed at the top of the performance settings page may show different results in memory and bandwidth usage. The connection speed setting is not only toggling those checkboxes, it’s also affecting how RDP communicates with the remote host!

Terminal Connection based on PuTTY

Use the Active Plugin settings page of a terminal connection and select to use the PuTTY based plugin (you need to close and re-open the properties after you changed the plugin):

Once you changed the plugin to the PuTTY plugin, you’ll see much more options – to be more precise: all options which PuTTY is offering can be configured and controlled from within Royal TS. So you can now have all the benefits of bulk-edit, template connections or connection file sharing within a team for PuTTY connections from within Royal TS:

In the Terminal Connection main settings page you can choose to use an existing PuTTY session or you can create your own in Royal TS. All settings, including colors, SSH settings, tunneling, etc. are available and stored in your Royal TS document.

Once you connect to your session, you can make use of key sequence commands or invoke the PuTTY system menu from the Actions ribbon tab. As the screenshot suggests, the PuTTY session can be embedded (tabbed) or external and this can be changed while you’re still connected.

If you’re a fan of PuTTY, take a closer look at our integration into Royal TS and let us know what you think.

Terminal Connection Improvements (Rebex based)

A couple of smaller but useful improvements were made around input handling:

Key sequence direct mode initially enabled: This setting will enable/disable Key Seq. Direct Mode in the Actions ribbon tab. At any time, while connected, you can toggle this option in the Actions tab. If it is enabled, all key sequences will be sent directly to the server without simulating keyboard input. Special characters (like {TAB}) are not supported in this mode and are sent as text. Larger and more complex key sequences might work better this way and isn’t as error prone as simulating keyboard input where you aren’t allowed to interact or move the focus away from the terminal session while the key sequence is active.

Character and line paste delay: This setting will enable/disable the paste delay settings in the Actions ribbon tab. As before, you can toggle this option in the Actions tab at any time while you are connected. If you enable paste delay, everything pasted from the clipboard (also key sequences) will be send to the remote server with the configured delay between each character or line.

Scrollback lines limit is now 99999.

The Actions ribbon tab now also offers common selection commands like Select All, Select None and a Copy to Clipboard command.

In addition you can enable Keyboard Scrolling for CTRL + SHIFT - PAGE UP/PAGE DOWN scrolling within the terminal session.

Last but not least, we’ve implemented a basic Find feature which allows you to search for a text within the terminal window (including the scrollback history).

Download the Latest Beta

As always, you’re welcome to download and test the latest beta. Click here for more information, installation instructions and the download link.

Cheers,
Stefan

We’re happy to announce a major milestone in the history of remote management tools. After almost a year of Royal TSX beta testing and more than 6 months of Royal TS 2.2 development, we are finally ready to release Royal TS (for Windows) Version 2.2 and Royal TSX (for OS X) Version 1.0.

Cross Platform

For the first time in the industry, effortlessly manage your remote connections on Windows and OS X. Documents created with Royal TS/X (aka Royal TS for Windows and Royal TSX for OS X) can be used on Windows and OS X. Even team sharing features to use and synchronize documents across platforms are available. In addition you can also use Royal TSi to open and access your documents on iOS devices.

Connection Plugins

Royal TS/X can handle a variety of different connection types:

• Remote Desktop (RDP)
• VNC
• Terminals (SSH, Telnet, etc.)
• Web Pages
• External Applications (Windows only)
• Performance View (Windows only)

To explore all available plugins for Royal TS (for Windows), click here.
You can find all available plugins for Royal TSX (for OS X) here.

Browser Extensions

Credential management in Royal TS/X has now become even better! You can now access your credentials from Chrome and Firefox with our brand new Royal Passwords browser extensions. More information and downloads are available from our dedicated Royal Passwords page.

Bundle Offering

Upon popular request we're proud to announce that starting today bundle licenses for Royal TS/X are available with a 25% discount compared to individually purchased licenses. Head to the Buy page to find out more.

Royal TS/X Features

Both, the Windows and the OS X release are packed with lots of new features. As mentioned in the title of this blog post, this is a major release and it’s no understatement!

Royal TSX is THE utility for system engineers on OS X. No other software on OS X provides an easy to use UI, a rich feature set and many different connection types in one single package. Features like the document list, credential management, a tabbed interface, team sharing features and task automation are the foundation which we build upon. Digging a bit deeper, you'll also find AppleScript access, KeePass document support and our Royal Passwords browser extensions to be indispensable features. For a more detailed look at the feature set, please visit our Features page.

Royal TS (for Windows) has come a long way since its early days as one of the first Multi-Remote Desktop client and evolved to a very powerful and versatile tool. This release features lots of enhancements like KeePass document support, Windows 8/Server 2012 RDP 8 support, alternative Terminal support based on PuTTY, Royal Passwords browser extensions, as well as new connection types like VNC, External Applications and Performance view – just to name a few. A complete list of fixes, enhancements and new features can be found here.

During beta testing, we also released a number of blog posts about many of the new features.

The unique client functionality on both platforms as well as the compatibility of documents is reason enough to party, but we’re not done yet! Stay tuned for more exciting news and upcoming products…

Command tasks in Royal TS are very versatile and can be used for many different things. You can use them in context of a connection to quickly execute a command like ping while using the computer name/IP address of the selected computer(s) using “replacement tokens”. You can also use command tasks to be executed before you connect to a connection or after you disconnected from one by setting up the Connect Task and Disconnect Task configuration in the connection properties or the parent folder if you specified to use the settings inherited from the parent folder.

To explore command tasks, open the help document from within Royal TS (press F1 or by using the Help ribbon tab) and read the Command Task topics.

Injecting Values from your Context Connections

By using replacement tokens you can easily access all configuration settings of the context connection, such as computer name/IP as mentioned above but also things you put in one of the Custom Fields, for example. This makes the use of tasks more powerful and flexible.

Prompts

Sometimes you need to pass in values which are “more dynamic”. Values like session IDs or an often changed password/pin code which cannot really be stored in one of your objects because they change every minute or so (RSA SecureID tokens). While we are planning some advanced features around tasks and prompts in one of our next major releases, I just want to share a quick and effective way to implement prompts using out-of-the-box functionality in Windows.

Let’s assume a scenario where you need to establish a VPN tunnel with a VPN client but the password used in the VPN client command arguments is a dynamic, often changed pin code. For demonstration purposes I will create a command which prompts for input and then writes it to the console using the ECHO statement:

Let’s have a look at the command in more detail:

cmd.exe /v:on /c "set /p PWD=Password: & echo !PWD! & pause"

To test this, you can put the above line in a command prompt window and see the results.

Here’s what’s happening:

• The Command we start in our task is cmd.exe
• The /v:on argument tells the command prompt to expand environment variables at execution time using the ! character as delimiter (instead of %). Enter cmd.exe /? for more information.
• With the /c argument we actually tell what command we want to execute
• With the & character we chain multiple commands together
• The first command in our chain is the SET statement: set /p PWD=Password:
  • /P allows you to prompt for a string and assign it to an environment variable
  • PWD is the environment variable name we use to store the prompted input string
  • Password: is the “prompt string” which is displayed in the command prompt
• The second command in our chain is the ECHO command. This is just for demonstration. In a real world scenario this would be the command to open a VPN tunnel which needs the password submitted as argument. Something like:

  connect.exe /user:skoell /password:!PWD!

• The third command in the chain is pause to stop execution and verify if our environment variable expansion works. This command in the chain should be removed in the final task definition.

If you put the command in a command prompt (cmd.exe) or just start the command task in Royal TS it will look like this:

Summary

When you replace the ECHO statement with the actual call to your VPN client application and assign this command task as a connect task in your connection properties, you can easily create simple prompts with no fancy add-on tools, etc.

Of course, this technique can also be used for lots of other stuff. You can chain commands together in this way to display some information (for example a list of tasks), prompt for the task ID to kill and kill the entered task. The sky is the limit…

cheers, 
Stefan

This blog post is dedicated to clear some myths and confusion around password protection and encryption of Royal TS/X documents (.rtsx files).

As many of you already know, Royal TS/X allows you to password protect documents and encrypt sensitive data in those documents. Regardless of your configuration, passwords are never saved unencrypted (clear text) in your document but if you password protect your document with a strong, complex password, all sensitive data is encrypted based on that password.

Password Protecting Documents

If you plan to store any credentials in one of your documents, we strongly recommend to password protect it. To do that, right-click or select the document you plan to store the credentials in the Navigation panel and edit the document properties. Go to the Encryption configuration page and specify a strong password. After you’ve done that, you are prompted to enter that password whenever you open a document or open the document properties.

Note: there’s a distinction between documents you create and the Application document! In fact, Royal TS/X can open multiple documents (in addition to the always present Application document) and each document can be encrypted with a different password.

Difference between Application and User Documents

Documents you create in Royal TS/X (user documents) are stored wherever you choose to save the document to (as .rtsx file). You can create and open multiple documents, with different objects and even use credentials or tasks from one document in another document. This is mostly done to separate connection objects from credential objects in order to easily and securely share connections in a team without the credentials. For more information about securely sharing documents, read this blog post or this help topic.

The Application Document is “special”. It holds default settings, configurations but also folders, tasks and credentials if you want to. The application document is always open, cannot be closed and is stored (by default) in the user profile on Windows in %appdata%\code4ward\code4ward.RoyalTS.UserPreferences.config or on OS X in ~/Library/Application Support/Royal TSX/UserPreferences.config

In general, the Application document is still a document and can also be encrypted.

Password Protecting the Application Document

Since the application document can also be used to store credentials, you can also password protect the application document using the View –> Options / Preferences dialog. When you password protect the application document, all sensitive data (such as passwords) are encrypted and you get prompted for that password every time you open Royal TS/X (because the application document is loaded at that time) and when you open the Options / Preferences dialog (in case you want to disable encryption or change the password).

What is Encrypted when you Password Protect a Document?

The file structure of Royal TS/X documents (.rtsx files) and the Application document is very simple and flexible. It is basically a simple XML file which contains a huge list of settings (like folders, connections, credentials, etc.). This huge list of settings consists of different values (such as name, description, RDP port, etc.). Some of those values (passwords, passphrases, protected custom fields, gateway password, etc.) are treated differently and are considered sensitive. All sensitive values are stored encrypted in the document. At any time, you can open the .rtsx file in notepad (or any other text editor) and look at those values. You will see that no password can be found in clear text. Just make sure you have a backup and do not mess up the XML file!

Password Prompt: Can I open a document without the password?

The answer to this question is yes and no. It depends which password is prompted.

Scenario 1: User Document Password Prompt

If you want to open a password protected Royal TS/X document (*.rtsx file) and do not remember the password anymore, you cannot open the document. You either enter the password or you cancel the dialog (which will cancel the file open command as well). There’s no way to get into the document without the password!

Scenario 2: Application Document Password Prompt

If you password protect the Application document using the View –> Options / Preferences dialog, you will get a password prompt when you start Royal TS/X. Now, the process for the application document is a bit different: If you cancel the dialog, you get the following:

This prompt is a fail safe in case you forgot the password. If you answer the question above with Yes, Royal TS/X will open the application document without the password but Royal TS/X is unable to decrypt all sensitive information in the application document (such as passwords). As a result, those passwords are all reset and blank. You still see the credential object but if you open the properties, you will not see any password.

You may wonder why we did it this way and here’s the answer: Without this fail safe, you wouldn’t be able to ever start Royal TS/X again without knowing the password for your application document.

Summary

In general, password protected user documents cannot be opened without the password – never ever. All sensitive data in documents are encrypted based on the password you chose and there’s no way for you, the application or anyone else to decrypt all the sensitive information without the password.

The same applies to the application document with the exception that we allow the user to open the document. Since the encryption password is unknown in this scenario, all encrypted (sensitive) information is lost in this process. The user can still start Royal TS, still sees all folders, objects, etc. he created but he has to re-enter all sensitive information.

It is also very important that you are aware of which of your documents are password protected. Protecting the application document using View –> Options –> Encryption / Preferences –> Encryption does not provide any protection to any other document. Protecting a user document only affects the document you chose to protect. When you are using multiple documents and you want to protect all of them, make sure you configure Encryption for each document individually.

I hope this clarifies how Royal TS’ security features work and also helps how to properly configure password protection according to your needs.

Regards,
Stefan

We get a lot of feature request to better implement and support PowerShell capabilities in Royal TS. While we are thinking about some cool scenarios for one of our next major Royal TS for Windows versions, I want to share some guidance on how to integrate PowerShell into your Royal TS workflow with the current version of Royal TS (V2.2 and later).

Since Royal TS V2.2 supports embedding external applications using the External Application connection type (see Help Reference), you can integrate almost any other Windows application into your Royal TS workflow – including Powershell or the PowerShell ISE.

Preparing PowerShell

Before we can truly integrate PowerShell in Royal TS, we need to make sure that the PowerShell window can be resized to the appropriate window size. To do that, make sure you start the powershell.exe from an elevated command prompt (in %windir%\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0). Then click the System Menu and click on Properties:

Make sure the Screen Buffer Size is big enough to enable Royal TS to completely embed the PowerShell window. This depends on your screen resolution, your font size, etc. Try a couple of values, such as 500 or 1000.

Embedding PowerShell

For the next step, leave the PowerShell window open and switch to Royal TS. The best way to integrate external applications into Royal TS is by using the dashboard. For this purpose, I always have an “empty” External Application connection just for the Dashboard functionality. I call it “All Programs” and usually make only use of it when I want to integrate a new tool into Royal TS:

As you can see in the screenshot above, the PowerShell process I previously started is still running and is shown in the Dashboard. Just select the Windows PowerShell process and click Connect (Ad Hoc) on the dashboard toolbar. A new ad hoc connection will be created with your selection and the PowerShell window will be “swallowed” by Royal TS.

Adding the PowerShell Connection to your Document

As you can see, the ad hoc connection can be found in the ad hoc folder in the Application document and the PowerShell window is embedded in Royal TS. Having the connection in the Ad hoc folder will not keep the connection once we disconnect. But we want to keep the connection and we also want to have easy access to PowerShell whenever we want.

To make our “PowerShell connection” available in our document, just drag the connection to one of your folders in your document (as shown above). Finally, we open the connection properties and rename the connection or tweak other settings if we like. Now, if we need a PowerShell session, we just connect to it, as we would with any other connection:

What are the Benefits?

You may wonder, what do I gain by doing this. There are a couple of advantages:

• Your PowerShell “Connection” works as any other connection. You can rearrange the tabs, use split-views, make it external and embedded while connected, etc.
• You can create many copies (Ad hoc or not) and use multiple PowerShell sessions consolidated in one place.
• Using the default connection properties you can establish VPN connections or any other command task before the process is started or after it is closed.
• Using the credentials configuration you can run the PowerShell session under a different user account (as long as the user account is allowed to log on on your workstation).
• You can make use of key sequence tasks in one or more sessions to automate your workflow and gain access to often used commands.

What about the PowerShell ISE?

The procedure above can be used for almost every application (which allows embedding). I’ve used the same steps to integrate the ISE and as you can see, it runs fine when integrated in Royal TS:

Conclusion

I hope this little blog post is helpful and demonstrates the power of the External Application connection type. I’ve seen a lot of cool use cases and the PowerShell example here is one of my favorites. If you have any feedback, questions or suggestions, let me know.

cheers,
Stefan

In a couple of weeks (November 1-3) we will be presenting Royal TS, Royal TSX and maybe some brand new exciting stuff at the E2EVC (Experts 2 Experts Virtualization Conference) in Rome, Italy.

E2EVC (also known as PubForum) is an awesome community event which takes place twice a year in Europe – each time in a different city. This is their 20th event and they are doing this now for 10 years! It’s all about virtualization (Desktop/VDI, Server, etc.). Experts, nerds and geeks from all over Europe, 15 Citrix CTP’s, 6 vExperts and 18 MS MVPs (yours truly included!) are attending, most of them even presenting.

We’ve been to E2EVC a couple of times now and we always had a great time there. Last time (in Copenhagen) we presented Royal TS for the first time ever at a conference. This time in Rome, we’re not only sponsoring the event, we’re also presenting again. As far as I know, there are still some seats left. So if you are interested in virtualization, Royal TS and if you want to meet us in person, get a ticket and come to Rome. This event is on a weekend, so there are no excuses like “I’m too busy” ; )

Our presentation will be on Sunday at 9:15 and it will be all about Royal TS/X, no slides or death by PowerPoint, just pure awesomeness.

The complete Agenda can be found here: http://www.e2evc.com/home/Agenda.aspx

Hope to see you there!

cheers,
Stefan and Michael

Today, we are happy to announce the newest addition to the “Royal Family”: Royal TSD (for Android) and the new update of Royal TSi (for iPhone, iPad) with iOS 7 support.

Royal TSi: What’s New?

First of all, Royal TSi is still free! We massively updated the look and feel of the application when used on iOS 7. Check out the screenshots and see for yourself. As before, you can open one or more Royal TS/X documents to browse the contents of your documents and access your credentials. You can open all your web page connections in Safari and also open connections using 3rd party clients. Royal TSi is offering some built-in templates and the possibility to create custom templates which can be used to open 3rd party clients.

Here’s an overview of connections and templates offered by Royal TSi:

Remote Desktop Connections

• 2X RDP
• iTap RDP (the product is discontinued but it’s still working for those who installed it)
• Jump Desktop
• Microsoft RDP (no automatic password submission at the moment)
• PocketCloud RDP
• PocketCloud RDP (incl. Gateway)
• Remotix RDP

VNC Connections

• iTap VNC (same as above, discontinued)
• Jump Desktop
• PocketCloud VNC
• Remotix VNC

Terminal Connections

• Prompt
• vSSH (using temp. file)
• vSSH (using url scheme)

Check out the Settings in Royal TSi for more information about templates and AppStore links regarding 3rd party apps. As you may know from previous versions, Royal TSi can easily be extended and tweaked to support other 3rd party clients as well by just adding new templates. Read this blog post for more information.

Royal TSD (for Android)

Like Royal TSi, Royal TSD (for Android) is a free app which provides the same kind of access to your Royal TS/X documents. This first version of Royal TSD allows you to open web page connections in the default browser and remote desktop connections using Microsoft RDP, iTap RDP, or any other 3rd party RDP client supporting .rdp files.

Visit our Royal TSD web site and get it on Google Play now!

Last weekend we had the pleasure to talk about Royal TS at the great E2EVC event in Rome/Italy. We had a great time, met nice people and were engaged in interesting discussions. I think it’s time to recap our experience of the event.

What is E2EVC?

E2EVC is Experts to Experts Virtualization Conference (formerly PubForum). It’s all about virtualization and a true community event. Traditionally, this event takes place twice a year in Europe, almost every time in a different city and always on a weekend (to ensure there is no excuse like “I’m too busy for that”!).

The event is limited to 140 attendees. So this is kind of a small group. Everbody knows everybody. There are of course fresh faces showing up but it has this family like feeling – almost feels like going to a reunion. This time, E2EVC had attendees from 18 countries including 18 MS MVPs, 15 CTPs and 6 vExperts.

For more information about the E2EVC, visit their web site: http://www.e2evc.com/home/

Royal TS

This was my 4th E2EVC conference. Last time, in Copenhagen, we got a last minute speaker slot to introduce Royal TS to the audience. The feedback and interest was huge and we barely scratched the surface. I was so overwhelmed that I asked Alex (the original inventor of PubForum/E2EVC) for another session in Rome and also offered to be a sponsor of the event.

My good friend Michael Seirer and I delivered a session about “Advanced scenarios with Royal TS”. Michael posted a nice summary of his experience here. In a nutshell, we talked about bulk-edit and bulk-add, the power of templates, integrating external applications and some top secret, never seen before Royal TS V3 / Royal TSX V2 features. A video of our session will be posted on the ThePubForum YouTube channel in a couple of months.

What’s next?

We had a blast in Rome and I’m really happy we could make it. The E2EVC conferences in 2014 are:

• May 30th - June 1st in Brussels, Belgium
• October 31th – November 2nd in Barcelona, Spain

For the first time, there will also be an E2EVC in the US next year: May 9th in Los Angeles, CA

We are currently trying to figure out if we can attend one of the next (hopefully all) events, so stay tuned and maybe we can meet there in person.

Cheers,
Stefan

We’ve just released 2.2.6 and since the last two releases (2.2.5 and 2.2.6) are also bringing a couple of new features, I thought I dedicate a small blog post about those new features.

Windows 8 and Windows 8.1

We’ve changed the things our installer is doing during installation. In previous versions we created a bunch of “Start Menu” items (like read-me file, license agreement, link to the web site, etc.) which are now a bit annoying when running Windows 8(.1). We’ve reduced the number of items to 1 – the link to the app! Those files and links are still there and most of them can be accessed through the application or by just navigating to the installation folder. Admittedly, this is not really a new feature, but I thought I mention it, in case you miss those items.

Anyway, there are some 8(.1) related features new to Royal TS I want to mention:

• The Hyper-V dashboard now supports Windows Server 2012R2 and Windows 8.1 hosts.
• The new RDP8 bandwidth detection can be configured in the Performance settings page:
  http://www.royalts.comhttp://www.code4ward.net/Help/RoyalTS/V2.2.6/index.html?introduction.htm
• Smart Reconnect will now leverage the new and faster dynamic desktop size adaptation introduced in RDP8+.
  

Chocolatey

Speaking of installers and setup. With 2.2.6 we are now also officially listed on chocolatey.org. Easy and fast command-line based installation of Royal TS. Michael recently blogged about the chocolatey package creation.

Terminal Connection

A lot of improvements went in the terminal connection type. The PuTTY version was updated to the latest available version and when using both, Rebex or PuTTY, you can now use environment variables in the logging path. The Rebex plugin got a couple of more new features, like PuTTY like support for double-click-drag and triple-click-drag as well as extending the selection using SHIFT-click. In addition, smart character substitution will correctly deal with smart quotes and smart ticks.

Web Page Connection, Credentials and Auto Fill

Some important changes (which also may break one or mor of your existing Auto Fill mappings) were made to the Web Page connection. Royal TSX (for OS X) and the Royal Passwords browser extensions are using a jQuery based JavaScript method to automatically fill forms. Royal TS on Windows used a different approach in the past but we streamlined our code bases and we are now using the same method. Due to this transition, you may see one or more of your auto fill mappings not working anymore. In this case you just need to reconfigure it.

The good news is, that it’s now much easier to manage credentials, auto fill mappings for Royal TS’ Web Page connection or the browser extensions. Here’s an example on how you could leverage this in Royal TS:

1. Create a Credential you use to logon to a web site:

As you can see, I configure a display name, username and password as well as the URL to the login page.

2. Switch to the Auto Fill page and inspect the Elements drop down list:

Royal TS will scan the configured web site (the login page you configured in the URL field in step 1) and shows you a list of elements. Most of the time, the elements have reasonable names and can easily be identified. In this example, we need an auto fill mapping for username, password and a click for the login button.

3. Map an element and assign a value to it:

You can either set a static text or use a replacement token to access fields of the credential (in this case we map the $this.UserName$ token of the credential to the Username HTML element). Whenever possible, use replacement tokens, especially for the passwords. This will ensure that all data is stored encrypted and cannot be read in clear text!

4. Configure all mappings:

Notice that a link or button can only be clicked. That’s basically it. We now configured Royal TS to map the username and password HTML element to the corresponding variables from the credential using the replacement tokens.

5. Open a Web Page (Ad Hoc) from the Credential:

Once you’ve configured the credential you can quickly and easily open the web page from various places:

• Select the Credential in the Navigation tree and hit the new button in the Dashboard toolbar Web Page (Ad Hoc).
• Right-click the Credential in the Navigation tree (or the Credentials panel) and click on the Web Page (Ad Hoc) menu command.

Now we’re logged in and ready to use our web page connection. Notice a new Ad Hoc connection at the bottom of the Navigation tree.

So that’s easy, right? We didn’t even need to create a web page connection and assign the credential to it. Of course, if we want to have a dedicated Web Page connection in one of our documents, we can either just drag the resulting Ad Hoc connection to our document or create a new one:

You just need to enter a name, the URL and assign the Credential to the Web Page connection. You don’t need to configure Auto Fill again as it is already configured in the Credential. Royal TS will always use the auto fill configuration of the credential in case no auto fill is configured for the connection itself. This way you also can “override” the auto fill mapping in the connection while using the same credential.

Using the Browser Extension

Once you’ve installed our Firefox or Chrome browser extensions, you can access the same credential and auto fill mapping from your browser. Royal TS needs to be running and you need to make sure that the browser extensions are allowed:

In Chrome for example, click the Crown button to open the browser extension. Please consider that you password protect your document containing credentials. Chrome will ask for the password before you can access your credentials. You can also just start typing to filter/narrow down the list of credentials:

If your Chrome tab is already on the URL configured in your Credential, it will just auto fill the form and log on to the web site. If you are on a different page, Chrome will open a new browser tab and do the auto fill and login.

Tips and Tricks and the Power of jQuery

In some rare cases Royal TS may not be able to find the correct elements on the web page. jQuery offers a set of tools for matching a set of elements in a document. Using jQuery selectors allows you to get to the correct element by following their convention. All modern web browsers have a “inspect element” functionality with which you can get a specific element in the HTML document. Without getting into too much details on jQuery, here is an example on how to identify elements on a web page:

The above snippet shows how a login page could look like in HTML. To map the fields in this login page in Royal TS, you can use the following jQuery selectors:

What’s happening?

• Username: input[name=userName]
  This selector tells jQuery to select all “input” HTML elements with the name “userName”
• Password: input[name=password]
  Same as userName.
• Clicking the login button: #login-form button[type=submit]
  This selector tells jQuery to select a button element of type “submit” which is a child of an element with the id “login-form”.

For more information about jQuery selectors, visit this page: http://api.jquery.com/category/selectors/

Feedback

I hope the recent improvements and enhancements are useful for you. If you have any feedback or issues, head to our forums or contact us.

cheers,
Stefan

After several months of beta testing, we’re finally ready to release Royal TSX 1.2 to the world!
This release is filled with new features and bugfixes, so we thought we dedicate a blog post to highlight the new features, improvements and enhancements.

So here comes the shiny new stuff:

Feedback

We hope the new features, improvements and enhancements are useful to you. We happily take any kind of feedback. If there’s something you want to tell us, head to our forums or contact us directly.

have a great weekend, 
Felix

We are getting a lot of emails from our users and from potential new users about certain features in and around Royal TS/X. While we have excellent online resources (like our Features pages for Windows and OS X, as well as the online documentation for Windows) we want to dedicate a series of blog posts about the history, the current state and supported platforms of our apps, as well as the future of Royal TS/X.

Platform Support

There are not many products which support more than one platform to manage remote connections. In fact, we are currently the only software vendor providing a solution which allows you to work with your remote connections and credentials on Windows, OS X, iOS and Android! While we have full support for many popular protocols (RDP, VNC, SSH, Telnet, etc.) on Windows and OS X, our free companion apps for iOS and Android allow you to access many of those connections through 3rd party applications.

Features

Royal TS/X provides the richest set of features and connection types in the industry on WindowsANDOS X:

• Remote Desktop (RDP): state of the art features like Gateway support and Hyper-V management.
• VNC: connect to any computer running a VNC server (OS X, *nix, Windows, etc.).
• Terminal (SSH, Telnet, RS232): highly customizable terminal emulation.
• Web Pages: integrate web based management consoles in your workflow, including automatic logon.

Most of the above can also be used in our free mobile companion apps through 3rd party apps, such as Microsoft’s Remote Desktop client.

In addition, the Windows version of Royal TS includes support for:

• External Applications: integrate other apps into Royal TS, most of them even embedded. Also read our recent blog post on how to integrate PowerShell.
• Performance View: providing real time performance monitoring capabilities in Royal TS. Here’s our blog post about Performance Views from February.

It's worth noting that all supported connection types are highly integrated in Royal TS/X and can be used in our tabbed interface, as well as in external windows.

Features available on Windows AND OS X:

• Organize your connections, tasks, credentials and templates in folders and documents.
• Centralized credential management.
• Encryption and password protection. Read our blog post about encryption in Royal TS/X.
• Command Tasks to integrate command-line tools (such as a simple ping command or establishing VPN connections).
• Key Sequence Tasks to automate keyboard input.
• Support for Connection Templates.
• Easily establish connections using the “Ad Hoc” feature, you can even duplicate connected sessions.
• Flexible tabbed user interface allowing you to work with many sessions, as simple as in your web browser.
• Dynamically switch to external windows (or full screen) and work efficiently with multiple screens.

Making Teams Work

Royal TS/X documents can be used with any of our apps on any platform, regardless of where they were created. One of our biggest achievements in Royal TS/X is the way we merge (synchronize) changes from multiple users while they modify the same document. Royal TS/X is transparently handling everything needed to keep documents in sync. You don't even have to set up a SQL server or any other database component! Simply making the documents you want to share with your team available through a network share or a cloud storage service (Dropbox, Skydrive, etc.) is enough.

Because of this, Royal TS/X makes it extremely easy to work in a team. To find out more about the team sharing capabilities in Royal TS/X, read this blog post.

Royal TS/X is Free!

First and foremost, Royal TS/X can be used for free for an unlimited amount of time as long as you do not exceed 10 connections and 10 credentials. No license key required, no registration required, just download, install, and use. Best of all, there’s not a single feature in Royal TS/X which isn’t available in the free version (shareware mode). So, if you are working in a small IT shop or need to manage a small test environment in your basement, Royal TS/X can be used for free – for personal and commercial use!

Pricing and Licensing

We provide reasonable pricing and licensing options, in case you need more than 10 connections or 10 credentials. The licensed product allows you to open multiple documents as well.

The choice is yours, if you only need Royal TS/X on a single platform, you get it for a very low and competitive price. Even our bundle pricing (which includes Royal TS for Windows and Royal TSX for OS X) is still much more affordable than any other package in the industry. In addition, we provide volume license discounts and better deals for larger departments or companies (site and global licenses).

All licenses are perpetual and include at least 12 months of software maintenance – which gives you access to the latest versions and priority email support.

Our mobile companion apps for iOS and Android are available for free!

Feedback

We happily take any kind of feedback. If there’s something you want to tell us, head to our forums or contact us directly.

Royal greetings,
Stefan and Felix

What the heck is Kudu? – you may ask. Well, if you are running web site(s) on Windows Azure, you should read on and learn how you can not only leverage Kudu but also how to integrate it in your workflow using Royal TS. Even if you do not use Windows Azure web sites, you might still find the blog post interesting as it demonstrates some powerful features of Royal TS.

About Kudu

Scott Hanselman blogged about how easy you can see Trace output of Windows Azure hosted Websites here. I’ve blogged about the backend that is making all this work: Project Kudu. Project Kudu is an open source project from Microsoft that is the backend of their Git deployment of Azure Websites. It’s very easy to integrate this in your Royal TS workflow and have Kudu at your fingertips…

Integrate the Kudu project page as a Web Page

Since you need to authenticate to the Kudu page, we will first prepare a Credential:

For the Kudu project URL you need to use the following URL scheme: https://.scm.azurewebsites.net/

So let’s create a new web page with the URL:

Now, let’s assign our previously created credential to the web page:

Next, click on Advanced. Its important that you specify to use Basic Authentication for this:

And here you go :)

From there you can monitor the log stream (diagnostic log stream) or open the diagnostic console:

Integrate the Kudu project page as a Template

If you have many Azure web sites, you probably don't want to define a new Web Page for each Kudu page. Assuming that your Azure web sites are already configured in Royal TS, you can use custom fields to store the Kudu page address for each Azure web site. Then, just create a Template which opens the Kudu project page based on that custom field.

For this we need to store the Project Kudu URL in a Custom Field in your Web Page Connections:

Remark: Note that the "Custom Field 1" was renamed to "Kudu Project Page" - you can do this easily through editing the Default settings:

Then, you create a Web Page Template. To do this, go to the Ribbon Tab "Edit" -> "Add New Template" -> "Web Page".

Define $CustomField1$ as URL and to make sure configure the same settings as shown in the first section (Credential, Basic Authentication):

After this, you can connect to every Azure-hosted Web site via this template and directly go to the Kudu Project site.

Integrate the Azure Logstream as an External Application

The Azure log stream is a very helpful tool to diagnose issues with your web site. Developers can easily write to the log stream from within their application. You can also directly connect to the Azure Logstream via curl (or similar command line tools), in my case something like this:

curl -u sargola_deploy https://azurelogstreaming.scm.azurewebsites.net/logstream -k

If you execute the curl command, you will be prompted to enter the password. Using Key Sequence Tasks in Royal TS you can still fully automate executing curl end even let Royal TS enter the password for you.

Let’s define a Key Sequence Task:

Via the "Edit" Ribbon Tab and add a "Key Sequence Task" you specify it like this:

Then add an External Application:

Command: cmd.exe
Arguments: /k “[PATH-TO-CURL]\curl.exe –u $EffectiveUsername$ https://[websitename].scm.azurewebsites.net/logstream –k”
 

Also make sure you assign the credential (we prepared in the first section) to the External Application!

Then reference this Key Sequence Task in your External Application:

And now you get any trace-messages from your Web site directly in this command line:

I was unable to find any limitations of the log stream feature besides the information Scott Hanselman mentioned in his blog (http://www.hanselman.com/blog/StreamingDiagnosticsTraceLoggingFromTheAzureCommandLinePlusGlimpse.aspx):

- Tracing is turned on for 12 hours

- You can and should specify the log settings (log files, names, sizes, etc.)

Upcoming Royal TS Feature

We get numerous feature request that point in the direction of having a second/custom dashboard functionality based on an URL that is based on some connection property (like the host name). In the next major release we have a couple of improvements and enhancements on the roadmap which will further simplify your daily work for scenarios like this.

cheers,
Michael

Can you believe that? More than 10 years ago, on October 26th back in 2003, I released the first public version of Royal TS and it looked like this:

As promised in this blog post, a little background story about the name and the tool itself. I hope you enjoy…

Why bothering writing an RDP client?

My main motivation to write a tool like this was the poor implementation of Microsoft’s RDP MMC snap-in. At the time Microsoft’s client didn’t expose much of the available settings and the MMC lacked something basic like the “Connect to Console” switch. While you could do most stuff with mstsc.exe, I have found it very limiting and not very user friendly to work with multiple sessions at the same time. After I realized that the ActiveX control offers most switches and allows me to host multiple sessions in an Explorer-like single-window interface, I decided to write my own little app for that.

My programming experience on Windows at the time was mainly VB and I already started to look at VB.NET (which was still very new) but I wanted to dive into C#. I’ve done a lot of Perl scripts for automation, so curly braces and a C-like language didn’t really bother me. In retrospect, Royal TS was purely a learning project for me to get used to C# and the .NET framework. Looking at the early code now makes me blush…

After a couple of weeks, the app was ready to use and mostly stable. I felt I could release it to the public as there was literally no tool out there which provided the functionality and user friendly workflow when it came down to RDP-ing into remote machines.

But what should I call it?

I thought a lot about the name but all I knew was that it’s just a “better” terminal services (TS) client. I can’t really recall who suggested Royal TS but as soon as I heard it, I thought it would be perfect. The name not only sounds “kingly”, it also had a familiar ring. In the German speaking area here in Europe, a rather well known fast food chain offers a burger called “Royal TS" (which is basically a quarter-pounder with cheese and TS stands for tomato and salad). This should also explain the icon back in the days…

Royal TS as Freeware

Here are the highlights showing the evolution of Royal TS 1.0 up to 1.5.1 (which is the last available freeware version):

• Terminal session list to see who is connected.
• “Connect to Console” option.
• Connection list with bulk-edit functionality.
• Ability to send message to a remote session or reset a remote session.
• Sorting.
• Quick-Add from the toolbar.
• Password protection for documents.
• Got sick of the burger icon.
• TS Gateway support.
• Minimize to SysTray.
• External Window mode.
• Automatically load document on startup.

From Freeware to Shareware

For more than 5 years, Royal TS was “Freeware” and could be used freely for personal or commercial use. I accepted donations though. A lot of my friends were trying to convince me to make more with Royal TS and ask for money instead of giving it away for free. For a long time, Royal TS was just a hobby and I couldn’t really invest much time. Additionally, I felt that much more must be done before I even think about asking for money.

Before I ask people to pay a shareware fee, I wanted to implement some important missing features (like password protection for documents and gateway support) in the last free version (1.5.1 – which is still available for free!). I really didn’t want users feel left alone after such a long time with Royal TS available for free. When I communicated the plan to go shareware, I also got a lot of emails from users with a couple of machines, begging for a free version with a connection limit. I thought that is reasonable. I never liked the idea of having a crippled down version or a 30 day trial period and afterwards you have to either buy or leave. I felt, having all features available, even to admins with small environments for free is a much better approach. Users can thoroughly test all features and use it for free as long as they want. No trial expiration, no nag screens, only a friendly reminder that if you need more than 10 connections, pay a small shareware fee to remove the connection limit.

The last free release of Royal TS (1.5.1) was overwhelming. At that time, I ran my web server at home in my basement with a fairly limited internet uplink. In just two days, I had more than 55.000 downloads– needless to say that my uplink was glowing. I was struggling to keep my server available and realized that this needs to change quickly…

What was the Response?

I was fully aware that a lot of people wouldn’t be happy about my plan going shareware but I was kind of surprised about the emails I got. Almost every email was about encouraging me and welcoming the idea of asking for a small fee. I even got emails like “I’m really glad you are now asking for money because it means Royal TS is here to stay for a while longer”. This was clearly not what I expected! I only got two (!) emails from users who expressed their disappointment. This doesn’t mean that only two users were unhappy about it but I expected a much higher number here…

2009, the year of Royal TS 1.6

In 2009, I dedicated much more time in Royal TS, here are some highlights:

• Introduced tasks to execute command lines and the use of replacement tokens.
• Additional RDP properties (like DirectX, Desktop Composition, Clipboard Sharing, Audio Capture, Font Smoothing, and more).
• Bulk-connect and bulk-disconnect
• Authentication Level and Network Level Authentication (NLA) support.
• Custom Fields and Notes
• Connect and Disconnect tasks.
• Full Screen mode and switch between window modes.
• Connect with Options menu.
• Drag and drop support for re-ordering items in the tree.

2010, the year of Royal TS 1.7

The highlights of Royal TS 1.7:

• Search and filtering of connections.
• Hyper-V dashboard and console connection support.
• Folder level credentials.
• Ability to set the keyboard layout for the remote session.
• Ability to take a screenshot of the remote session.
• Ability to type the clipboard text (for Hyper-V console connections).

The Road to V2

During 2010 and 2011 I already worked on V2. It was an ambitious project. A lot of user feedback, even from the early days of Royal TS, was accumulated and triaged. It was huge. Users wanted to have more flexibility in organizing things, having credential management on board and foremost offering additional connection types. It was clear to me that a complete rewrite with an extendable architecture was needed and it was also clear to me that I couldn’t do it all alone. I was able to get help from some awesome people who also believed in a bright and shining future of Royal TS. In a team of three, we worked for almost two years on V2. Everyone who followed our blog could see how ideas evolved and how decisions were made. Early on, we provided beta versions and asked for user feedback and what you see now, is the result of great community work! We had a good idea how V2 should look like but in the end, Royal TS users were shaping Royal TS the way it is now.

Mac OS X, iOS, Android: Royal TS going Cross-Platform

After the V2 release, we worked hard on V2.1 to provide a terminal connection type for Royal TS. Out of the blue, I got a contact request on one of the social networks from Felix who wanted to meet with me. The name was familiar but I didn’t really know him. After a quick search on the web, I realized he was the guy who wrote mRemote – which was very similar to what I wanted to achieve with Royal TS V2. It turns out that he wanted to do something similar for OS X. After a couple of meetings we realized that we share the same passion: writing software with an eye for the details. After a year of Royal TSX development, Felix released V1. For the first time in the industry, you could now share the same document of connections and credentials across multiple platforms in a team with full server-less sync support! I think this accomplishment is truly amazing and I’m very proud I could be part of it.

About Me

I’m a husband and a father of two girls and a boy. I’m a Microsoft MVP (for System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management) and engaged in many local and online communities. I’m also running the local System Center user group – which I really enjoy. It keeps me on tabs what users really need and wish for in the industry. I’m the founder of code4ward.net (est. 1999), an Austrian based, privately held company providing consulting services and software development. Royal TS is my passion and we still have a lot of ideas. You can expect many useful and new things in the upcoming months and years. Stay tuned…

Big Thanks!

First, I want to thank my wife and family for their support. I can imagine, it’s not easy for “normals” to be married to a geek. Big, big thanks to Thomas Grohser, Michael Seirer and Felix Deimel for working on Royal TS/X. I’ve learned a lot from those guys and without their help, Royal TS – as it is today - wouldn’t be possible. I’m really happy and grateful that I can work with those awesome guys who are true friends and professionals.

However, Royal TS is a direct result of user feedback. Therefore, big, big, big thanks to all of you!

cheers, 

Stefan

We received several feature requests regarding .rdp file handling in Royal TS/X. It seems that web based portals such as Amazon EC2 or Windows Azure are not only more frequently used, the desire for a better and tighter integration into Royal TS/X is also building up. A lot of good suggestions reached our inbox and thanks to the great feedback we got from our Royal TS/X users, we did something to improve the workflow with .rdp files.

In the latest Windows build (2.2.6.61216) the Royal TS installer (.msi file) asks you during install if you wish that Royal TS handles .rdp files by default. Even if you answer this question with no, you can always associate the Royal TS application (RTS2App.exe) with .rdp files by right-clicking and using the “Open with…” functionality in Windows Explorer.

"But I'm working on a Mac!", you might say... Don't worry, we've got you covered too and there's a dedicated section in this blog post for OS X users labeled "What about OS X?".

What happens when Royal TS handles .rdp files?

Royal TS will import the .rdp file as an Ad Hoc connection and immediately connects to it. If Royal TS isn’t running, it will be started first. By default, Ad Hoc connections are cleaned up as soon as they are disconnected. To keep your connection, you can just drag the connection from the Ad Hoc folder to one of your documents.

We published a short video which demonstrates the new feature in three different scenarios:

• The RDP file is opened through the Windows Azure portal used within Royal TS’ Web Page connection.
• The RDP file is opened through the Windows Azure portal used in an external browser.
• The RDP file is opened through Windows Explorer.

The first use case demonstrates perfect integration of the workflow as it shows how you can navigate and use the Windows Azure portal from within Royal TS, quickly connect to your instances without leaving Royal TS or using any other tools. Of course, this also works with other web based portals which provides .rdp file access (such as Amazon’s EC2).

What happens when I open .rdp files using Royal TS?

We also slightly changed the behavior of the File –> Open command, in case you directly open an .rdp file. It’s now behaving the same way as opening an .rdp file through a portal: import as an Ad Hoc connection and connect immediately.

What about importing RDP files?

Importing .rdp files using the Data ribbon tab didn’t change at all. The import wizard asks you for one or more .rdp files and imports the connections to the selected folder.

What about OS X?

Royal TSX also allows opening .rdp files since Version 1.2.5. Either use Finder's "Open With" menu or simply drag the file to Royal TSX' Dock icon and an Ad Hoc Connection will be created instantly. You can then either disconnect from the host when you're done and let Royal TSX clean up the Ad Hoc connection or drag the connection to one of your documents to keep it.

More Screencasts

In case you missed our screencast gallery, I encourage you to check it out. We have some interesting short clips showing various features and use cases of Royal TS (such as our powerful bulk-edit feature).

As always, if you have feedback or suggestions, do not hesitate to contact us.

cheers,
Stefan & Felix

New Blog Location

Please update your bookmarks and RSS readers to the new feed. The new feed URL is http://blog.royalapplications.com/?feed=rss2 (which can also be found directly on our blog).

Our new Support Portal

Our new support portal URL is http://support.royalapplications.com

1. Contact support The 1st area in our support portal is the Contact support widget. Just enter your concerns and issues (as you would when you send us an email). Before the message is submitted to us, you will see a list of possible knowledge base articles (see 3.) which could be of help. Without leaving the widget, you can easily take a peek at the contents of the article and in case it was helpful, you can just click on “This answers my question” and we know that this KB was helpful to you. If you cannot find anything in our knowledge base, go ahead and send us the message. We then just need to know which product you are talking about (which is mandatory) and which version you are using. This then creates a ticket in the system where we can continue the conversation privately using email. While we do our best to respond to every ticket as soon as possible, we prioritize customers with an active software maintenance. Please include the order number to get queued up. If you are shy or just want to send us your support request by email, you can still reach us using support(-at-)royalts.com or support(-at-)royaltsx.com
2. Give feedback This is the area to share your ideas and feature requests. Similar to a forum, those feedback entries can be discussed publicly and allow others to participate. The new and exciting thing about the “Give feedback” area is, that others can not only join the discussion, they can also vote on ideas. This way, we can better track which features and ideas are more important and more valuable for users. In addition, we can better interact with users who are interested in an idea. We can better communicate if an idea is under investigation, planned or in development. We can also easily notify all involving users about beta releases in order to test the implementation. Each user has 10 votes and can spend up to 3 votes on an idea. When an idea is completed or declined, all users get back their votes they spent on the idea. In addition, we can also convert feedback entries to tickets to continue the discussion in private. We usually do this, when a reproducible bug is reported using the Give feedback area. In this case, the user will also get back the vote(s).
3. Knowledge Base Previously we had an FAQ section in our old forum which kind of served as a small knowledge base. Our new support portal not only allows us to easily create and publish knowledge base articles, it’s also much easier for users to browse, explore and search our knowledge base.