Remote Desktop Services 2016, Standard Deployment – Part 4 – RD Web Access (Part2)

In this part we will move forward and customize our Web Access Login Page to make it look the way we want it to look.

This will be done on RDWA01 server.

PASSWORD RESET LINK

First thing you can do is add a password reset link, so it’s actually a link where users can change their AD passwords just from the main page of RD Web Access.

Let’s start by opening IIS in Server Manager

Expand the RDWA01 server –> sites –> Default Site –> RD Web page and click on Pages.

Double-Click on Application Settings

We can see that PasswordChangeEnabled is false so I am going to edit that and change that to true. Double-Click on it and type in True in Value

Just changing that to true means if the user’s pass expires, the RD Web Access page can prompt them to change their pass, but we want to go step further and give them a link on the main page. Minimize IIS and open Windows Explorer.

By default, everything for the RD web page is in %windir%\web\rdweb\pages\<language-code>.

This will also be the folder where we’ll do most of the customizing that’s discussed in this post.
Before we continue, make a backup copy of this entire %windir%\web\rdweb\pages folder.

We want to edit login.aspx. Right-click on it and select edit.

We need to find an area that talks about userpass, and the easiest way is just to search for userpass.

Scroll down and get to the end of the table and add new code. We are going to add another tr (is for table row), td (is going to keep this particular cell on the right-hand side) and now we’re going to add hyper-link, so that is a href. Whatever is in the tags is going to be what users are actually going to click on.

 

Save the file and browse to your RD Web Page. Now you can see a link on the main page and if you click on it, it will open up the password page.

WORK RESOURCES CUSTOMIZATION

Next thing we are going to do is to change the default images. The image in the upper left-hand corner is actually named logo_02.png

The image in the uper righ-hand corner is named logo_01.png.

they are located in the images folder. I have 2 images which I will copy into image folder (path %windir%\web\rdweb\pages\images)

Now we have to edit Site.xls, which is located in %windir%\web\rdweb\pages. Right-Click on it and select Edit

First thing I’m going to do is search for logo (remember, logo_01 is the one in the upper right-hand corner) and I’m going to replace that with my Mercedes logo.

Click Find Next 2 times and change logo_02.png as well. (Logo_02 is the one that’s right next to Work Resources)

Save the file and browse to your RD Web Page. Logo is changed.

BANNER CUSTOMIZATION

Now we will customize banner. That is the area with the globe behind work resources.

Edit Site.xls file again. Search for banner, and this banner_01 is the globe that we see. I am gonna replace it with Mercedes_Logo(2)

Save the file and browse to your RD Web Page.

 

Changing bg_globe_01.jpg changes the big globe background image of the whole site.

Browse to the %windir%\web\rdweb\pages folder and right-click on tswa file and click edit

I will replace bg_globe_01 with my image, silver.

Save the file and reload the page.

TEXT CUSTOMIZATION

WORK RESOURCES – this has to be changed using a Powershell connection on the Remote Desktop Connection Broker.

The text underneath it,

REMOTEAPP AND DESKTOP CONNECTION – is changed in an XML file

 

• Let’s go over to our Connection Broker to change Work Resources

Run Powershell as admin and type in Set-RDWorkspace -Name “Mehic”

Refresh the web page and take a look.

• Next thing I am going to change is the inforamtion below Mehic (RemoteApp and Desktop Connection)

Go back to RDWA01 and browse to %windir%\web\rdweb\pages\<language-code>. Right-Click on RDWAStrings file and choose Edit.

Modify this line and replace it with the message of your own.

Save the file and browse to your RD Web Page.

• Next thing we can do is customize the security setting messages

Browse to %windir%\web\rdweb\pages\<language-code> and right-click on login.aspx

• Security setting session timeouts

This is a public or shared computer – when you select this option your session timeout is 20 minutes

This is a private computer – when you select this option your session timeout is 240 minutes

You can change these settings in IIS

Expand the RDWA01 server –> sites –> Default Site –> RD Web page and click on Pages, and double-click on Application Settings.

• Customizing the disclaimer message

You can replace this text with a text provided by your organization’s legal department, or you can choose to clear it.

Browse to %windir%\web\rdweb\pages\<language-code> and right-click on login.aspx

• Forcing users to use the UPN / email address for logging on

If you would like that your users login with UPN insted of domain\username then you can change it in login.aspx

Browse to %windir%\web\rdweb\pages\<language-code> and right-click on login.aspx and choose Edit

Change this line to Email Address or replace it with the custom text you prefer.

If you change domain name to email address be sure to change this line as well from domain name to email address

That’s it.

In the next part we will move forward and customize the default page, the page that’s shown after a user logs on.

Cheers,

Nedim