Installing HTML5 Web Client for MS Remote Desktop Services 2019

The RD Web Client is an add-on for the Remote Desktop Web Access role that has been shipped with Windows Server 2019. The Web Client Version was introduced with RDS 2016 as a beta version then of course a production version. Now, with RDS 2019 it is been shipped with the initial package itself. Unlike RDS 2016 you don’t need to do any KB4 windows updates for RDS 2019. Just go ahead, check the below prerequisites and continue your installation using powershell.

Prerequisites

You already have RD Deployment that has an RD Gateway, RD Connection Broker and RD Web Access, all running on Windows Server 2019

Your RD Gateway and RD Web Access are configured with public trusted certificate

The RD deployment should NOT be configured to use per-device license. It still works but all your licenses will be consumed.

Deploy Remote Desktop Web Client

In your RD Web Access server open Powershell with administrative access (Run as Administrator). Then go ahead with the commands one by one.
Update the PowerShellGet module

Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet –Force

Restart your powershell to take this update effect.
Run the below command which will install Remote Desktop web client management

Install-Module -Name RDWebClientManagement

Run below command to download the latest version of Remote Desktop Web Client.

Install-RDWebClientPackage

You may end up with some powershell errors if so don’t worry and just make a system restart and then try the step 5. It should be good now.
You now need to configure the SSL certificate that has been used in your RD Connection Broker server. So go to your RD Connection Broker server and export your certificate as .cer.

Now copy your .CER certificate to your RD Web server and run the below command in your powershell.

Import-RDWebClientBrokerCert <.cer file path>

Run below cmdlet to publish your Remote Desktop Web Client.

Publish-RDWebClientPackage -Type Production –Latest

We are done now.

Now the RDS Web Client has been installed as an extension to your RD Web Access website. There won’t be a link from your RD Web Access portal but you can just access it using the below path. Just type ‘webclient’ after ‘/RDWeb/’ and you can see your amazing HTML5 web client for your RD Web Access. Example like the below URL.

https://yourrdwebaccess.com/RDWeb/webclient

If you want to deploy as a test you can do it with changing the type to test on the publish cmdlet.

Publish-RDWebClientPackage -Type Test –Latest

And you can access like the example URL below.

https://yourrdwebaccess.com/RDWeb/webclient-test

It should be looking like below one and works without prompting for any desktop client.

The Web Client works really cool if you have configured properly and your browser has HTML5 support. Note, most popular browsers have support with HTML5 hence no worries. If you click published Apps they are launched within the browser window with choice of full screen option. Like the image below.