Q. How can I configure the properties of my Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) RDP connections?

A. When you set up a Microsoft VDI environment, you set the connection configurations for each pool using the Remote Desktop Connection Manager. To set the configuration, select the VDI pool you want to modify and select Properties. Select the Common RDP Settings tab, as shown here.

From this tab, you can set the basic options, but you don't have control over more powerful options, such as whether the session should be in a window. To set these more granular controls, you need to select the Custom RDP Settings tab, which lets you perform any RDP configuration. Note that it's in the RDP configuration file format and not a nice GUI. The easiest way to find the configurations you want is to set up your configuration using mstsc.exe then save the configuration to an RDP file. Open the RDP file then copy in the configuration elements you want for your VDI pool.

In my example, I configured a set resolution Window mode, hadset it to send all keyboard combinations to the remote session, turned on multimedia redirection, turned off the redirection of audio from my local computer to the remote session, and assigned a LAN connection type.

For a complete list of options, see the Remote Desktop Services Technical Reference.