Draft:Windows 365

Submission declined on 8 February 2024 by MicrobiologyMarcus (talk). This submission does not appear to be written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. Entries should be written from a neutral point of view, and should refer to a range of independent, reliable, published sources. Please rewrite your submission in a more encyclopedic format. Please make sure to avoid peacock terms that promote the subject. If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted. If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Declined by MicrobiologyMarcus 3 months ago. Last edited by TheTechie 24 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author. Resubmit Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be declined again.

Submission declined on 25 September 2023 by 331dot (talk). This submission appears to read more like an advertisement than an entry in an encyclopedia. Encyclopedia articles need to be written from a neutral point of view, and should refer to a range of independent, reliable, published sources, not just to materials produced by the creator of the subject being discussed. This is important so that the article can meet Wikipedia's verifiability policy and the notability of the subject can be established. If you still feel that this subject is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia, please rewrite your submission to comply with these policies. Thank you for your submission, but the subject of this article already exists in Wikipedia. You can find it and improve it at Microsoft Windows instead. Declined by 331dot 8 months ago.

• Comment: I agree with the previous comment that all this article does is describe the features of the service and not actually factually describe the subject from a neutral POV. Further, I don't think this addresses the concerns raised by Talk:Microsoft Windows/Archive 5 § Proposed merge of Windows 365 into Microsoft Windows#Windows 365. Inappropriate use of WP:External links, instructional wording like A Windows 365 Cloud PC can be accessed by signing into the Windows 365 web portal at windows365.microsoft.comwith your account which is licensed to use the service. [sic] Let's leave product description pages to the company that provides the content and not worry about promoting it on the project. microbiologyMarcus ^{(petri dish·growths)} 21:37, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: This draft is for a title that was previously an article, but was then cut down to a redirect. If this draft is accepted, the history should be preserved. Do not tag the redirect for G6.
  Reviewers should check the history and verify whether there was a consensus to cut the article down to a redirect, or whether the action was taken boldly without discussion. If there was a consensus for the cutdown, do not accept this draft without verifying that the draft improves the article or that consensus has changed. If in doubt, please discuss.
  Robert McClenon (talk) 07:19, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: You've done a nice job describing the features of this software/service, but I see little significant coverage in independent reliable sources about this topic in particular to merit a standalone article. I would suggest that you start a talk page discussion at Talk:Microsoft Windows about the merits of either expanding that article or having a standalone article about this topic. 331dot (talk) 08:37, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

* The page Windows 365 in the mainspace is currently a redirect to Microsoft 365. This is a draft article. It is a work in progress open to editing by anyone. Please ensure core content policies are met before publishing it as a live Wikipedia article at Windows 365. Last edited by TheTechie (talk | contribs) 24 days ago. (Update)

Windows 365^[1][2][3] is a subscription-based cloud PC service created by Microsoft that became available to businesses on August 2nd, 2021^[4]. The service can either be accessed through the Windows 365 app, Microsoft Remote Desktop app or through the Internet.

The Windows 365 service^[5] is based upon Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), in which Microsoft controls and manages the infrastructure. Windows 365 is Software as a Service whereas Azure Virtual Desktop is to be considered to be a Platform as a Service.^[6]

Windows 365 offers a persistent and dedicated Cloud PC to the end-user, which can easily be accessed from anywhere.

Licenses

Windows 365 is based around subscribing to a Cloud PC of a size correlating to the license you have purchased. There are in total eleven different licenses so select from giving you different performance and storage.

There are also three different license types for Windows 365, targeted at different usage scenarios.

Windows 365 Business

Windows 365 Business is a license type targeted at smaller organizations (up to 300 users) and scenarios where requirements for manageability and control are lower. All management around Windows 365 Business is done through the Microsoft 365 admin portal and does not require any additional infrastructure such as an active directory or Azure AD.^[7]

Windows 365 Enterprise

Windows 365 Enterprise is a license type targeted at larger organizations and scenarios where more manageability and control is required. Windows 365 Enterprise is managed and provisioned through Microsoft Intune. Windows 365 Enterprise allows the use of Azure virtual networks and device management including monitoring and application distribution.^[8]

Windows 365 Frontline

Windows 365 Frontline is a license type targeted at scenarios where your users are not always connected to the service, such as shift workers. One license gives you three Cloud PCs, but not simultaneous sessions. Where licenses are assigned to a specific user in the Business and Enterprise version, Frontline licenses are assigned to a group of users. When an end-user connects to their Cloud PC a license is used and returned when the end-user closes the session.^[9][10]

Availability

Windows 365 launched on August 2, 2021. It is available worldwide except for China and Embargo Countries (Cuba, Iran, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Sudan, and Syria). Network performance and latency will affect user experience and are dependent on proximity to an Azure region.

Features

Windows 365 has various features that are not available in other virtual desktop services from Microsoft.

End user actions

Windows 365 has a set of feature only available on the Windows 365 platform, which are not made available in Azure Virtual Desktop which the service is built upon.

By using either the Windows 365 application or the Windows 365 web portal, end users can perform a set of actions:

• Restart
• Restore to a restore point
• Reset
• Troubleshoot connection
• Rename Cloud PC

Some of these actions needs to be enabled by an administrator (such as Restore and Reset) while other actions are made available as part of the base service.

Windows 365 Switch

Windows 365 Switch is a feature which allows the user to switch to their Windows 365 computer using Task View, thus negating the need to open a separate app. However, this feature must still be enabled in the Windows 365 app and is only available in Windows 11 Pro or Enterprise.^[11][12]

Windows 365 Boot

Windows 365 Boot is a feature that allows the user to lock a computer to only be allowed to sign into a Cloud PC, creating a Windows based thin client, which can be managed using software such as Microsoft Intune. Windows 365 Boot is only supported on Windows 11 and will instead of having the user sign in locally to the computer, allow them to sign in to their Cloud PC from the lock screen.

Windows 365 Boot needs to be enabled using a mobile device management tool such as Microsoft Intune and will not make it possible to boot into the computer locally.

Windows 365 Offline

Windows 365 Offline is an upcoming feature for Windows 365 which was presented at Microsoft Ignite in 2022. This feature, when released, will make it possible to work with a Windows 365 Cloud PC without any network connectivity.^[13]

Connectivity

Windows 365 can be set up using either Microsoft Hosted Network or Azure Network Connection. Which network type the Windows 365 Cloud PC will use is defined in the provisioning policy of the service. The network is also what defines in which Microsoft data centre the service will run.^[14]

Microsoft Hosted Network

Microsoft hosted networks are hosted and maintained by Microsoft. These are spread out to the different Microsoft data centres (Microsoft Azure regions) that support the service. Microsoft Hosted Networks has no prerequisites of any virtual network knowledge and are selected as part of creating the definitions for the Windows 365 Cloud PC configuration. It is possible to utilize several different Azure regions for different configurations.

Microsoft hosted comes included in the service of Windows 365 and are pure internet connections with no connectivity to any local or corporate resource.

Azure Network Connection

Azure network connections are networks based on Azure Virtual Network, where you as an administrator bring your own network to obtain more control of the network used for Windows 365. By bringing your own network, and administrator can control what resources a Windows 365 Cloud PC will be able to access, or simply have more control over the network configuration if required.

Azure network connections are not included in the Windows 365 service and the pricing model is based upon the Azure bandwidth pricing.

Accessing a Cloud PC

Windows 365 web portal

A Windows 365 Cloud PC can be accessed by signing into the Windows 365 web portal at windows365.microsoft.comwith your account which is licensed to use the service. This enables the service to be accessed for basically any device or platform using a modern browser with HTML5 support. The web portal does not provide a full featured experience with multimedia redirection, but allows usage from any device.^[15][16]

The Windows 365 web portal provides the user with an overview of their Windows 365 Cloud PCs, as well as the ability to perform user actions such as restarting, restoring and resetting.

Windows 365 application

The Windows 365 application is only available on Windows 10 and Windows 11 and provides the user with a full featured experience including multimedia redirection, webcam support and improved Microsoft Teams functionality. The Windows 365 application can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store.^[17]

Microsoft Remote Desktop application

The Microsoft Remote Desktop application is supported for use to access Windows 365 Cloud PCs, but it lacks the user actions and only provides access to the Cloud PC.^[18]

The Microsoft Remote Desktop application is available for all major operating systems, including mobile devices, which allows for multi-platform support.

Criticism

Windows 365 has been criticised for its subscription based model, charging £28.80 per month the most basic plan of Windows 365 Business.^[19] Its requirement to have a substantial Internet connection has also been criticised.^[20]

References