XOAP AVD Manager is a browser-based control plane for Azure Virtual Desktop. Connect an Azure subscription and manage your entire AVD estate — host pools, session hosts, images, scaling, cost, and access — in minutes. No in-tenant appliance to deploy, no agents required to get started, and a free tier so you can prove value before you pay. 

• Works across subscriptions and Entra tenants from a single, filterable view. 
• Live data, direct from Azure — host, session, and cost data read straight from the Azure ARM, Cost Management, and Log Analytics APIs. 
• Concurrent-user licensing — pay for the users you actually run at once, not everyone who has an account. 

1. Single-pane fleet overview

• Live fleet dashboard — running hosts, active sessions, fleet utilization, and estimated monthly cost at a glance. 
• 24-hour activity charts — sessions vs. capacity, CPU, and network, drawn from AVD Insights / Log Analytics. 
• Savings view — estimated cost savings vs. an always-on fleet, with a live scale-events feed. 
• One-click AVD Insights enablement — turn on diagnostics per connection or per host pool whenever a pool isn’t yet reporting. 

2. Host pool management 

• Full lifecycle for pooled and personal host pools — create, configure, and delete with type-to-confirm safety. 
• Guided New Host Pool flow — type, region, load balancing, image, scaling plan, connector, auto-heal, and FSLogix in one slideout, with Azure naming-convention suggestions. 
• At-a-glance health — per-pool health, scaling mode, utilization bar, assigned image, and connector coverage. 
• Pool-level operations — add hosts scoped to the pool, rolling reboot (drains and reboots one host at a time, skipping hosts with active sessions), and install Windows updates across all hosts. 

3. Session host management 

• Fleet-wide and per-pool host tables — Azure power state, session count, CPU/RAM, connector status and version, disk tier, and per-host image version. 
• Image-drift detection — a badge flags any host not running the pool’s assigned golden image. 
• Complete host actions — start, deallocate, restart, reimage, drain, resume, install Windows updates, install connector, and delete. 
• Deep host detail — utilization donuts, health checks, VM details, live sessions, and session diagnostics (latency, protocol health, and the last error events). 

4. Sessions & helpdesk 

• Live session list — fleet-wide and per-pool, showing user, host pool, session host, state, active app, and start time, with search and filter. 
• Helpdesk actions per session — send a message, disconnect, or sign the user out (with an unsaved-work warning). 

5. Autoscaling & power management

• Reusable, named scaling plans — ramp-up / peak / ramp-down / off-peak schedules, weekday selection, capacity thresholds, minimum and warm-baseline host counts, and session / CPU / RAM triggers, assignable to many pools. 
• Visual scaling-plan builder with a live preview. 
• Weekend / off-day shutdown — automatically deallocates hosts on non-working days. 
• Holiday overrides — set specific dates with their own minimum host count. 
• Manual override — pin the running host count now; it auto-expires at the next schedule transition. 
• Scale-event log — every host-count change with before/after counts and the trigger that caused it. 

6. Cost intelligence & optimization 

• Real per-pool cost — day / week / month actuals from Azure Cost Management, scoped to the AVD resource groups, plus cost-per-session and spend-by-service. 
• Estimated savings vs. always-on, so you can show the value of scaling. 
• Per-pool monthly budgets with threshold alerting. 
• Automatic disk tiering — Premium SSD while a host is running, Standard HDD when it’s deallocated, to cut idle storage spend. 

7. Alerts & budgets 

• Proactive monitoring created as native Azure alert resources — no separate monitoring tool to wire up. Eight ready-to-use templates: 
• CPU high, low memory, and host-down metric alerts. 
• Unhealthy hosts, connection errors, high latency, and no available hosts log-based alerts (KQL over AVD Insights). 
• Monthly cost budget with 80% / 100% thresholds and optional forecast. 
• Delivery via Azure action groups and email. 

8. Image lifecycle management 

• Flexible golden-image sources — Azure Marketplace (latest Windows 11 multi-session), Compute Gallery, or managed images. 
• Keep-updated tracking — automatically follow the latest image version, gated to a maintenance window, with one-click rollback to the previous image. 
• Rolling rollout — drains and replaces hosts in batches with a color-coded progress view (queued / in-progress / done / failed) and per-host status. 
• Safe rollover — replacement hosts get previous names (during rollout the replacement host is renamed), and personal-desktop user assignments migrate to the new host automatically. 
• Image-deleted alert when an assigned image version no longer exists, plus per-host drift badges. 

9. Maintenance & patching 

• Per-pool maintenance windows (days / start / end / time zone) that gate automated refreshes and reboots. 
• Scheduled rolling reboots. 
• Windows Update patching — per host or across all hosts; deallocated hosts are started, patched, then deallocated again. 

10. Automation 

• Scripted Actions library — reuse your existing XOAP scripted actions or create new ones in a guided flow. 
• Event hooks — trigger a scripted action on any of 30+ AVD events (host start / stop / restart / drain / registered / unhealthy, scaling, schedule, session, and lifecycle events), with a recent-fires log. 

11. Workspaces, application groups & applications 

• Application Groups — every Desktop and RemoteApp group across all connections, with its host pool, publishing workspaces, and RemoteApp count; create new groups, publish to workspaces, and manage user assignments. 
• Workspaces — grid and detail views; publish or unpublish application groups, assign users per published group, and a Connect panel with the subscribe URL, web client link, and an Open in Windows App deep link. Safe delete and force-delete with a reviewable resource list. 
• Applications — App Attach / MSIX packages and published RemoteApps, with a Publish RemoteApp flow and assignment management. Published apps surface in both pool and host detail. 
• FSLogix storage — create and manage the storage accounts and file shares behind user profiles. 

12. Directory & user assignment 

• Full Entra directory — users and groups read live via Microsoft Graph, with on-prem-synced identities flagged as AD DS (synced), plus search and source filtering. 
• Real Azure RBAC assignment — assign any principal to an application group, a host pool, or a specific session host (Desktop Virtualization User on app groups, Virtual Machine User Login on VMs). 
• Assignment slideout — multi-select principals and, for application groups, read back current assignments by name with one-click revoke. 

13. Access control & governance 

• Role / plane model — Operations, Administration, and Infrastructure planes gate every action, with a “Viewing as” preview to check what each role sees. 
• Action log — every resource action (pool and host changes, image rollouts, reboots, patching, deployments) is recorded with timestamp, resource, and result, shown on each pool’s Activity tab. 

14. AI assistant 

• A platform-wide assistant powered by Claude, available throughout XOAP: 
• Explain — ask about any resource and get answers grounded in a sanitized, redacted snapshot of your fleet, cost, and scaling state. 
• Create & manage — add a session host, create an application group, assign a user, and more — through a confirm-then-execute, names-only model: you confirm in plain language, and the platform resolves names to Azure resource IDs. The assistant never touches raw IDs, scopes, or credentials. The action set is growing. 
• Usage transparency — the launcher shows prompts remaining today against your plan’s limit. 

15. Multi-subscription & multi-tenant 

• Merged fleet across subscriptions — one view of every pool, host, session, cost, and health signal. 
• Cross-tenant from one pane — manage AVD across multiple Entra tenants, each with its own isolated connection credential, filterable per connection. 
• Every resource tagged by its source connection for clean attribution. 

16. Getting started 

• Connect-first empty state — add an Azure connection inline without leaving AVD Manager. 
• Three start paths: QuickStart (a one-click disposable sandbox — resource group, network, pool, app group, workspace, scaling plan, and hosts — with an image picker, convention-based names, background provisioning with retry, and one-click teardown); Enterprise (a guided wizard covering governance tags, identity, network, image, scaling, insights, and connector); Manual (go straight to the manager and create each resource yourself). 
• VM size picker with live pricing — each size shows real pay-as-you-go pricing (per hour and per month, from the Azure Retail Prices API) alongside vCPU, RAM, and network, with a Recommended for AVD quick-pick row. 
• Tracked deployments — every host-add is a job with a live phase and an expandable, color-coded step log (creating VM → registering → Available, or the failure reason with remediation). 
• Workspace-friendly slideouts — maximize any panel to full width or minimize it to a side handle without losing your input. 

17. Licensing 

• Concurrent-user model — pay for peak concurrent users, not named or monthly-active users. 
• Licensing tab — current plan, managed-systems usage, live concurrent users, 30-day peak, and licensed seats with an over-license warning. 

Editions 

On the roadmap

We’re transparent about scope. The following are not in the product today and are on our roadmap: 

• Windows 365 management 
• Intune integration 
• Multi-region disaster recovery / failover 
• Always-on server-side automation (event hooks currently dispatch while the manager is open) 
• MSP packaging (per-customer grouping, delegated customer logins, and per-customer branding and billing on top of the cross-tenant management we already provide) 

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Can I work on multiple packages at the same time?

Yes. Create as many packages as you need from the dashboard (free edition limit: 10). Switch between them by clicking a card or using the package picker. Each package has its own files, configuration, phases, and test-run settings.

Do I need an internet connection?

Only for:

• Downloading .NET 9 runtimes (first install only, if not already installed)
• Downloading the latest PSADT from GitHub (optional)
• Checking for toolkit updates (optional; toggle in Settings)

All other functionality works completely offline.

Where are my packages saved?

Package definitions (configuration, phase code, parameters) are saved in %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard\packages.json. Uploaded files are in %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard\workspace\Files\{packageId}\.

Can I back up my work?

Yes. Copy the entire %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard\ folder. It contains all your packages, preferences, uploaded files, and downloaded toolkits.

How do I use the exported package?

The exported .zip is a standard PSADT v4 package. Extract it and run:

# Interactive install
.\Invoke-AppDeployToolkit.ps1 -DeploymentType Install

# Silent install
.\Invoke-AppDeployToolkit.ps1 -DeploymentType Install -DeployMode Silent

# Uninstall
.\Invoke-AppDeployToolkit.ps1 -DeploymentType Uninstall

# Repair
.\Invoke-AppDeployToolkit.ps1 -DeploymentType Repair

Or deploy it via SCCM/MECM, Intune, or any tool that executes PowerShell scripts.

Can I import my old PSADT v3 packages?

Yes. Use Import Local on the dashboard. The wizard detects v3 packages (Deploy-Application.ps1) and translates commands, variables, and parameters to v4 syntax automatically. Commands that map to multiple v4 functions are annotated with # TODO comments for you to resolve.

The application won’t start — what do I check?

1. Check the logs at %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard\logs\
   • desktop-{date}.log — Shows startup errors, API health check results
   • api-{session}.log — Shows API server errors
2. Verify .NET 9 is installed: Open a command prompt and run dotnet --list-runtimes. Look for Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App 9.0.x and Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 9.0.x.
3. Reinstall if the issue persists — uninstall first, delete the install folder, then reinstall.

How do I update XOAP PSADT Package Wizard?

Run the new installer. It will upgrade the existing installation in place. Your packages and settings are stored in %AppData% and are not affected by upgrades.

Can I change the install location?

Yes, during installation you can choose any folder. The default (C:\Program Files\XOAP PSADT Package Wizard) is recommended because the [InstallDelete] step in Inno Setup’s upgrade handling looks for that location.

Is my data sent anywhere?

No. XOAP PSADT Package Wizard runs entirely on your local machine. The only outbound network requests are:

• Checking GitHub for the latest PSADT version (optional, can be disabled in Settings)
• Downloading PSADT from GitHub (only when you click Download Latest)
• Downloading .NET runtimes from Microsoft (only during first install if needed)

No telemetry, no cloud services, no data leaves your machine.

What do the “Not available in Free version” lock badges mean?

They mark features that are visible in the UI so you can see the full feature surface, but are not active in the free edition. See EDITIONS.md for the full comparison.

How do I test my script without exporting?

Go to the Preview step (step 7), pick a DeploymentType and DeployMode, optionally toggle Run as Admin, and click Test Run. The script executes on your local machine and streams output into the embedded terminal. Test Run has a 120-second timeout.

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To open %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard\ directly: press Win+R, type %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard, press Enter.

The post File locations appeared first on XOAP.

• Auto-save runs every 2 seconds while you work, and runs once more when you click Save in the wizard header strip or navigate away.
• Browser refresh warning — if you reload the page with unsaved changes, the browser will prompt you to confirm.
• Skip to main content — press Tab from the document root to reach a hidden skip link for keyboard navigation.
• Mobile-friendly — the sidebar can be collapsed with the hamburger toggle on narrow viewports.
• Maximize editor — every code editor has a button (arrows-diagonal icon) to expand to full-screen, useful for long phase bodies.
• Esc to close drawers/modals — the Function Builder, tag drawer, import drawer, and confirm modal all support overlay click / Esc to close.

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The code editors in the Install / Uninstall / Repair phases include two productivity tools:

Cmdlet autocomplete

Built into every PowerShell code editor. No setup required.

• Cmdlet suggestion — type any prefix (e.g. Start-ADT) and the editor proposes matching cmdlets from the PSADT v4 library. Accepting a suggestion inserts the cmdlet with a snippet for each required parameter.
• Parameter suggestion — after a cmdlet name, type a space and - to see all parameters with type, required flag, description, and valid values (if any).
• Works across every phase editor and the Function Builder modal’s code preview.

Function builder modal

Click the Function Builder icon in any phase editor toolbar. A modal opens showing a category sidebar and a function list.

Categories:

Locked cmdlet cards still display (with the lock badge) so you can see what exists, but selecting them does nothing. Cmdlet autocomplete in the editor includes all cmdlets regardless of category, so typing them directly works even in the free edition — only the visual builder is gated.

For each function card:

• Name and short description
• A visual parameter editor (text inputs, dropdowns for validate sets, switches for SwitchParameter)
• A file-path picker for parameters named FilePath, Path, Destination, StubExePath, TargetPath, IconLocation, WorkingDirectory — populated from your uploaded package files
• Live code preview of the generated snippet
• Insert — drops the snippet at the cursor in the current code editor

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Open Settings from the sidebar footer. It is organized into three side-tabs.

General tab

Default package values

Documentation options — locked in free edition

Package storage — locked in free edition

The Save Settings button at the top of the page saves General tab values and any pending Package Configuration edits in one action.

PSADT toolkit tab

Active toolkit for export

Shows which toolkit will be used for script generation and export:

• Source label — Custom, Bundled, or No Toolkit Available
• Module Version — detected from PSAppDeployToolkit/PSAppDeployToolkit.psd1
• Custom Extensions included — badge shown if PSAppDeployToolkit.Extensions is present
• Refresh — re-queries the server

Below the status card:

• Auto-check for toolkit updates on startup — toggles GitHub version check at startup

Resolution order (top wins):

1. Custom toolkit path (if set and valid) — paid feature (see below)
2. Downloaded toolkit in %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard\Toolkit\{tag}\
3. Bundled template shipped with the installer

Download latest from GitHub

• Large Download Latest PSADT button — fetches the latest release from github.com/PSAppDeployToolkit/PSAppDeployToolkit, extracts it (zip-slip protected), and sets it as the active toolkit
• Displays the latest release tag and an “Update available” badge when applicable

Use custom toolkit — locked in free edition

Locked in free edition. Both the text input and the button are displayed but disabled.

Package configuration tab

Reads Config/config.psd1 from the active toolkit and renders each section as a card.

For each field the UI shows:

• The field key (e.g. MSI_LogPath)
• Any comment/description parsed out of the .psd1
• A form control appropriate for the type (text input, number input, or True/False toggle)

Editing a field and clicking Save Settings (top of page) writes the changes back to config.psd1 (with zipslip / path-traversal protection). The signature block, if present, is stripped on save.

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Tags help you organize packages in the dashboard. Open Tags from the sidebar footer.

Managing Tags

• Create a tag with a name (max 40 characters), description (max 160), and color
• Available colors: cyan, pink, orange, green, purple, indigo
• Edit or Delete tags at any time. Deleting a tag removes it from all packages automatically.

Assigning Tags

• From the dashboard, click the tag icon on a package card, or
• Select multiple packages and click Assign Tags on the toolbar

Each package can have up to 5 tags in the free edition. Tags appear as colored badges on package cards and in the tag filter dropdown.

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The Logs page (/logs) shows the API server’s log files.

• Session selector — each time the API starts it opens a new log file named api-{yyyy-MM-dd-HHmmss}.log. The dropdown lists all sessions still on disk (14-day retention).
• Monaco viewer — the selected log is rendered read-only in a code editor
• Search — filter lines in the current log
• Auto-refresh — the current session log refreshes every 5 seconds so you can watch requests stream in live

Files are stored in %AppData%\XOAP\PackageWizard\logs\. Each session’s log has a 10 MB size cap; files older than 14 days are cleaned up on startup. A parallel log for the desktop shell (desktop-{yyyy-MM-dd}.log) exists in the same folder but is not shown in this viewer.

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Installed apps

The Installed Apps page (/installed-apps) lets you browse applications installed on your Windows machine.

Controls

The registry is queried from:

• HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ (64-bit)
• HKLM\Software\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ (32-bit)
• HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ (per-user)

Snapshot workflow

1. Click Take Snapshot before running your deployment
2. Run your PSADT package (via Test Run or a real deploy)
3. Click Compare to see which applications were installed, removed, or modified
4. Results show status for each app and can help you verify that your uninstall phase cleans up everything your install phase added

The post Installed apps appeared first on XOAP.

You can import existing PSADT packages (v3 or v4) from .zip files.

1. From the dashboard, click Import Local
2. A drawer opens; drop one or more .zip files (or click to browse)
3. The wizard processes each zip and reports status

For each zip, the wizard will:

• Detect whether it’s a v3 (Deploy-Application.ps1) or v4 (Invoke-AppDeployToolkit.ps1) package
• Parse the script to extract session configuration values
• Extract phase content (pre/main/post for each deployment type)
• Extract any custom parameters
• Copy Files/* into the package’s workspace directory
• Add a new package to your workspace (respecting the 10-package cap)

For v3 packages, command names and variables are automatically translated to v4 syntax using the same translation service used by the /api/translate endpoint.

After import, you can review and edit each package through the normal wizard steps.

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