App Readiness (formerly AppM) v4.10 introduces an impressive list of new features and enhancements, strengthening its capabilities and significantly improving the overall experience of producing, testing, and publishing application packages.
Wrap Packages Using the PowerShell AppDeploy Toolkit
Wrapping has become the preferred way to create a deployment package, with the PowerShell AppDeploy Toolkit (PSADT) being the most popular method. App Readiness now offers a simple way to wrap MSI and EXE packages into a PowerShell script using PSADT. Once wrapped, these PSADT packages can be automatically smoke tested and easily converted to the Intunewin format for publishing to Intune.
Gen2 Desktop Gateway
Using our next-gen desktop gateway, interact seamlessly with the virtual machines in your browser to package and test applications. Unlike its predecessor, the Gen2 Desktop Gateway can be installed on Windows machines, eliminating the need for Linux in your implementation of App Readiness.
Event Log Handling Controls
App Readiness monitors event logs during smoke testing to help identify possible issues. Unrelated errors or warnings may occasionally appear during this process, negatively impacting your smoke test status. To address this, new settings have been introduced under System > Testing > Smoke, allowing you to manage how event logs are treated with regard to smoke testing. You can now designate event log entries as Error or Warning or add them to the ignore list, giving you complete control over the smoke testing outcome.
Simplified Package Options Page
The Package Options page, shown when adding an application to AR, now only allows the selection of output package types that can be created. Additionally, the Repackage Settings will be displayed only if the selected output package type requires repackaging. This enhancement makes the experience of adding new packages and generating desired package formats faster and more intuitive.
Intunewin Enhancements
The Intunewin enhancements provide more flexibility and control when generating Intunewin packages. A new toggle button under System > Packaging > Intunewin allows you to choose whether the command line for a package should be wrapped into a CMD file or used directly when converting to Intunewin format. If you opt to wrap the command line into a CMD file, two new properties will appear in the IntuneWin Package Information section of the Packaging tab, displaying the contents of both the install and uninstall CMD files. Additionally, the install and uninstall CMD file names will now match the package name for easier identification.
Additionally, packages that are ready for deployment after being created and smoke tested in App Readiness can be seamlessly published to Intune for endpoint deployment. This Intune integration is enhanced to support setting the optional application version value in Intune when publishing applications.
Command-line Suggestion Improvements
Significant manual effort is often required to research command-line switches for silent installation and uninstallation. App Readiness's command-line suggestion capability saves these hours by automatically suggesting command lines when adding a new package. This capability has now been enhanced to support additional setup authoring tools, improving coverage of more legacy setup files to improve the provided suggestions further.
A New System Menu
The left panel System menu has been updated to a slide-out menu with regrouped options for more intuitive navigation. Improvements to other areas of the menu are planned for future releases.
Please refer to the release notes for the complete list of new features and enhancements.