UW-Madison Remote Desktop Service - Overview

This document provides an overview of the UW-Madison Remote Desktop Service, which provides employees supplemental access to commonly-used, campus-licensed applications that are only available on the Windows platform. At this time, the service is primarily intended for use by DoIT Departmental Support customers. The Remote Desktop Service is not approved to host or process sensitive or restricted University data and is not to be used for these purposes.

Table of Contents
See Also

Requesting Access

University of Wisconsin-Madison employees should complete the Remote Desktop Service Access Request Form to request access to this service. For requests on behalf of groups of employees, please contact support@doit.wisc.edu.

Connection Instructions

Detailed instructions for connecting can be found here: UW-Madison Remote Desktop Service - Connection Instructions

Applications Available

The following applications are available for use:

7-Zip
Adobe Acrobat DC
Audacity
EMS Desktop Client¹
Google Chrome
Microsoft Office 365
- Access¹
- Excel
- OneNote
- Outlook
- PowerPoint
- Publisher
- Word
Microsoft Project Standard 2024^1,2
Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT)
- AD Certificate Services
- AD Domains and Trusts
- AD Sites and Services
- AD Users and Computers
- Group Policy Management
Microsoft Visio Standard 2024^1,2
Mozilla Firefox
Notepad++
OfficeConnect
Oracle SQL Developer
Perceptive Content Desktop Client
PuTTY
QWS3270 Secure
SecureCRT
SecureFX
Treesize
WinSCP
WiscIT Powered By Cherwell¹

¹ - Application available to be run independently of a full desktop session.

² - Software requires additional license purchase and proof of ownership to access. The application will not open for users that have not been granted access. See UW-Madison Remote Desktop Service - Requesting Access to Licensed Software.

Information on requesting the installation of additional software not listed here can be found in UW-Madison Remote Desktop Service - Requesting New Software

Limitations

To ensure a responsive environment for those actively utilizing the service, the following session timeouts are enforced:

Disconnected user sessions (when a user closes their session but does not explicitly logoff) are automatically ended after 3 hours.
Idle sessions (connected sessions without user interaction) are automatically ended after 8 hours.

While user profiles should allow files to be stored between sessions, data persistence is not guaranteed and important data should not be stored solely on the Remote Desktop Service. Network or cloud storage should be used instead.

User profile quotas have been implemented to prevent profiles from exceeding 20GB in size. In order to prevent excessive profile sizes due to file syncing, the desktop clients for supported UW cloud services are intentionally not installed. Please use the web portals for these services instead.

Maintenance Windows / Planned Outages

The scheduled maintenance windows for Remote Desktop Service are Wednesday 3AM to 5AM and Sunday 5AM to 8AM. Outages planned for any other time will be communicated via remotedesktop-users@g-groups.wisc.edu.

Running Applications as a Different User

NetID accounts should be used to connect to the Remote Desktop Service. In most instances where it's necessary to use a privileged account to run a program (e.g. the administrator of a Campus Active Directory OU attempting to open AD Users and Computers), please connect to the service using your standard NetID credentials, then use the Windows "Run as different user" command (Shift + Right Click the application/shortcut) to open the program as your privileged account. Any profile data of users logging in with OU accounts will be automatically removed.

Troubleshooting

Having troubles getting or staying connected?

Ensure you are attempting to connect from a campus network or WiscVPN and that you're following the connection instructions here.
If your session appears to connect, but you are unable to view the window, or have other issues, you may have a corrupted session. Please contact the DoIT Help Desk for assistance.

Have Feedback or Need Additional Support?

For assistance with the Remote Desktop Service beyond the above documentation, or to provide feedback regarding the service please contact the DoIT Help Desk. For assistance accessing department-specific resources via this service (such as printers, network storage, etc) please refer to documentation supplied by your departmental IT provider.