Moving Day! Migrating from the Legacy Web Clip App Catalog to Intelligent Hub

July 07, 2021

If you are wondering about the difference between the legacy AirWatch web clip app catalog and the Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub app catalog and how to migrate, this is the blog post for you. There are a few considerations to think about, and this blog covers them all. Find out everything you need to know to migrate successfully.

What are Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub and Hub Services?

Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub is the digital workspace application for all employees, on any device, no matter where they choose to work.  Intelligent Hub empowers employees with consistent access to all the tools and resources they need for work.  Organizations can customize the Intelligent Hub app to provide a branded experience for their employees with Hub services, including a unified app catalog with single-sign-on, ‘For You’ notifications and corporate communications, self-service resources, virtual assistant, and an intranet home page.  Think of Hub Services as the server component and admin console and Intelligent Hub as the user-facing client.

To learn more about Intelligent Hub and the many Hub services available, you can read more in the blog here: https://blogs.vmware.com/euc/2021/04/what-is-workspace-one-intelligent-hub.html

Why Should You Use the Intelligent Hub App Catalog over the Legacy AirWatch Web Clip?

Intelligent Hub provides a modern catalog experience for employees to discover, install, and launch apps.  The catalog can be accessed as a native app on iOS, Android, macOS, or Windows 10 devices, or accessed via web browser on any device.  In addition to browsing apps by category, IT teams can recommend new apps or apps that are relevant for specific roles.  Employees can designate their favorite apps to be available in the ‘Favorites’ section of the app for simple, one-click access. 

There are several advantages to using the Intelligent Hub catalog instead of the legacy UEM web clip catalog:

  • Native app on mobile provides a great experience for employees.  This allows for better performance and OS navigations like swipe and force touch.
  • Employees now have the option to launch apps straight from the catalog.  
  • Catalog can be accessed on any unmanaged device.
  • Completely unify the catalog with Workspace ONE Access and provide employees with single sign-on support for SaaS, virtual, web, and native apps. 
  • Employees can now access additional corporate resources from the same application – corporate comms, intranet web pages, self-service and support tools, and more!

Prerequisites for Intelligent Hub and Hub Services

In order to utilize the Intelligent Hub app catalog to its full potential, make sure you have the following prerequisites in place:

  • Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) tenant, SaaS or On-Premises
  • Workspace ONE Access tenant, SaaS or On-Premises
  • Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub (Android, iOS, macOS, Windows 10, or web browser)

How to Enable the Intelligent Hub App Catalog

For existing Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) environments, Hub Services can be enabled directly from the UEM admin console.  Then the Intelligent Hub app catalog can be enabled and further customized from within the Hub Services admin console. The following steps walk you through enabling Hub Services and accessing Intelligent Hub app catalog settings.

Note: Enabling the Intelligent Hub app catalog will sync any existing native apps and web clips added via the UEM console into the Intelligent Hub app catalog.

  1. From the Workspace ONE UEM admin console, click GROUPS & SETTINGS on the far left, then click Configurations.image 56
  2. If you see a settings experience notification, click GO TO CONFIGURATIONS.image 57
  3. Either use the search bar or scroll down and click Intelligent Hub.
    image 58

  4. Depending on whether Workspace ONE Access is already integrated with UEM or not, choose one of the following options:

    • If Workspace ONE UEM is already integrated with your Workspace ONE Access tenant, you will see the Hub Services URL populated. Click the LAUNCH button.
      image 59

    • If Workspace ONE Access is not already integrated with UEM, click the GET STARTED button, then enter the Workspace ONE Access tenant URL, username, and password in the Activate Hub Services dialog box to integrate UEM with Workspace ONE Access.
      image 68

    • The Activate Hub Services dialog box appears:
      image 60

  • After activating Hub Services, click LAUNCH to access the Hub Services admin console.

How to Customize the Intelligent Hub App Catalog experience for employees

After clicking LAUNCH, you will see the Hub Services admin console where you can customize the Intelligent Hub experience for employees, including the app catalog layout.
image 61

The starting point for the Intelligent Hub app catalog looks like this:

image 62

The Intelligent Hub app catalog can be organized for users by creating sections such as New Apps, Recommended Apps, Categories, Promoted apps or a custom app section.

image 63

Intelligent Hub branding and colors can be customized as well, to fit the organizational theme.

image 64

In addition, Hub Templates can be used to provide customizations for different teams within the same organization.

Additional Resources

The following additional resources can help you to enable Hub Services and customize Intelligent Hub:

How to Deactivate the Legacy Web Clip App Catalog in UEM

Prior to enabling the Hub Catalog experience for all your production users, we suggest that you test in a test environment, a production environment, or both, using Hub Templates to target a smaller subset. The use of Hub Templates allows you to pilot the features in production use cases without impacting the rest of the users.

Note: The Legacy Web Clip App Catalog and the Hub Catalog are not mutually exclusive, which means that you can run them both in parallel. Therefore, if you wish to enable the Hub Catalog experience and still maintain the legacy Web Clip Catalog for a duration of time while end users get used to the new experience, you can do so.

Enabling the Hub Catalog experience is not disruptive to the already deployed Legacy Web Clip Catalog from Workspace ONE UEM.

You should inform your users of an upcoming experience change in Intelligent Hub from “Agent-Only” mode to Hub Catalog experience.

Note: This assumes that you have the Intelligent Hub application installed and configured on user devices. If you do not have Intelligent Hub deployed, consider pushing Intelligent Hub as a managed application with Hub Services catalog enabled.

Once you’ve enabled Hub Catalog and are ready to deactivate the Legacy Catalog, navigate to the Publishing tab under Groups & Settings > All Settings > Apps > Workspace ONE > AirWatch Catalog > General > Publishing tab, and deactivate the Legacy Catalog options for each platform.

image 66

Note: If you have deployed a dedicated profile with the Workspace ONE Device Services URL endpoint for the catalog, remove or deactivate that profile assignment.

Additional Resources

The following adoption resources can help you to curate your end user-facing communication:

Other Deployment Considerations

There are a number of other options to consider, such as whether to go with Workspace ONE Access SaaS or on-prem, as well as UEM and Hub Services version considerations.

Workspace ONE Access SaaS vs. On-premises

Hub Templates support is not currently available within the on-premises version of Workspace ONE Access. Hub Services must be configured at the same UEM Organization Group (OG) where Workspace ONE Access is configured, and the organization group type must be either customer or partner.  Once the Hub catalog is enabled in Hub Services, it is inherited by all child OGs.  Therefore, be aware that enabling Hub Catalog via Hub Services in an on-premises environment will make the catalog available for all devices at or below the customer OG.

For more information, see Using Hub Templates to Customize the Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub Experience for Different Users (Cloud Only).

UEM Version Considerations

Starting with Workspace ONE UEM 1901, Hub Services is configured in the UEM admin console by default.

With UEM 2008, support for Hub Templates was introduced, allowing administrators to assign Hub Services settings on a granular (smart group or user group) level.

With UEM 2105, building on top of Hub Templates capabilities, the administrator now can specify on a per-organizational group basis (with the ability to inherit/override) whether devices enrolled in the specific OG should receive any Hub Services features.

Note: This feature is targeted to customers that have use cases that may not call for Hub Catalog or other Hub Services features.

For more information about the Hub Integration Tab, see Hub Integration Tab.

image 67

Hub Services Version Considerations

Workspace ONE Access 20.01 is the first on-premises release to support Hub Services. As such, it is recommended that on-premises customers upgrade to the latest supported version of Workspace ONE Access, 20.10, before they migrate from the Legacy Web Clip Catalog to the Hub Catalog.

How to Create a Unified App Catalog

Now that you have enabled the Intelligent Hub app catalog, this section is where you can learn how to build out a truly unified catalog that includes web clips, SaaS apps, native mobile and desktop apps, and virtual applications and desktops.

The prerequisite before combining Workspace ONE Access and UEM added apps within a single catalog is to ensure the source of authentication for Intelligent Hub is set to Workspace ONE Access.  This setting is located within the Workspace ONE UEM admin console. Go to Groups & Settings > All Settings > Devices & Users > General > Enrollment > Authentication tab:

image 65

WARNING: Switching the Source of Authentication for Intelligent Hub from Workspace ONE UEM to Workspace ONE Access requires end-users to reauthenticate. Additionally, some authentication flows, such as token authentication, are not supported in Workspace ONE Access.  Therefore, make sure to test this change thoroughly in a test environment before deploying it in production.

Additional Resources

For more information, see the following:

How to Add Web Clips to the Catalog in Workspace ONE UEM

Check out this article to learn how to add web links to applications to your catalog from the Workspace ONE UEM console: Deploy Web Applications on your Devices.

How to Add SaaS Apps to the Catalog in Workspace ONE Access

This video walks through how to add web links to the catalog via Workspace ONE Access: VMware Workspace ONE Access: Web Links – Feature Walk-through.

The following documentation describes how to add and manage SaaS apps in Workspace ONE Access:

How to Add Virtual Apps to the Catalog

For more information, see the following:

How to Add Native Apps to the Catalog in Workspace ONE UEM

If you have not already added native apps to the catalog, or if you need to add more, review the following resources to understand how to add native applications via the Workspace ONE UEM admin console.

Contributors

Many thanks to Sergey Belous, Product Line Manager, and Marshall Anne Busbee, Product Line Manager, for their contributions to this article.

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Christina Minihan

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Staff Architect, Workspace ONE Technical Marketing, End User Computing, VMware. Christina has a background leading Pre-Sales System Engineering teams at VMware, including End User Computing and Internet of Things business units, and also at Google Cloud. Prior to Workspace ONE Technical Marketing, she led Technical Marketing, demo lab management and PoC/Beta Testing Programs for New Product Introduction within the VMware Edge and IoT business. Christina has a passion for communicating highly technical concepts in a format that anyone can understand. She holds a Bachelors in Management Information Systems from The University of Georgia and an MBA from Kennesaw State University.