Introduction
Preference Policy is a tool to remotely configure the Streamer settings of your deployed Streamers and is accessible from the Splashtop Gateway web console. By assigning Streamers to your policy, you can configure and overwrite existing Streamer settings without having to redeploy the Streamer or manually change the settings locally at the endpoint.
Required Gateway version: v3.24.0 or higher
Platforms
At the current time, only Windows and Mac Streamers (version 3.5.2.5 and higher) can be added to a Preference Policy.
Usage
Create Policy
To create a new policy, log into your Splashtop Gateway web console, hover over Management, and click on Preference Policy in the drop-down menu. Then, click on Create Policy.
You will see the following screen if you have not created any policy yet.
If you have already created a policy, you will see the following screen instead.
Beside Name and Description, there are three major categories: General, Security, and Bandwidth Management.
Each of the three categories divide up into two boxes. The left box (Selected Options) contains the settings that you have added to your policy. The right box (Unselected Options) contains the settings that you can choose from to add to your policy.
You can also assign a group manager to your policy.
To add an item to your policy, click on the blue plus button. The selected item will be moved to the left box of selected options.
Instead, if you want to remove an item from your policy, click on the red minus button. The selected item will be moved to the right box of unselected options.
After you have added an item to your policy, you can configure its value. Most of the items have binary values that you can toggle on or off. If the switch is greyed out, the value is set to off. Conversely, if the switch is blue, the value is set to on.
Initially, the item values are set to their default value. For example, the blank screen setting above is by default turned off.
If you are not sure about the function of an item, you can click on the angle bracket icon to display a concise description.
Bandwidth Management is a brand new tool that allows you to control bandwidth in terms of the parameters FPS and audio quality.
As for the items Maximum FPS Option and Maximum Audio Quality Option, if you select the highest value (Maximum FPS Option: "Ultra High", Maximum Audio Quality Option: Ultra High - 384k"), it will have the same effect as not adding these items to your policy at all: no bandwidth restrictions for your users.
After you have created the policy, you can then add computers to it.
Directly click on Add Computer in the pop-up.
Alternatively, click on Add in the Preference Policy dashboard.
Select the computer or computer group you want to apply your policy to, and click on Save. Please also make sure that the Splashtop Streamer is updated to the latest version.
Please note that only Streamers v3.5.2.5 or higher will be displayed in the list of computers that you can add to your policy.
The associated policies will be displayed in a new column "Policy Name" at Management - all computers page.
Assign Preference Policy to Deployment Package
Since Splashtop On-Prem Gateway v3.24.0, you can have your Streamers to follow a specific preference policy the moment they get deployed. Select a created preference policy from the dropdown shown in the below screenshot when creating a new deployment package from the Deployment page. Please refer to this article for more information on how to create a new deployment package: How do I set up the computers that I want to access remotely?
Behavior
In-Session
When a user remotes to a computer that associated to a preference policy, the configured settings or restrictions apply to the remote session. For example, if your policy restricts the FPS to High and the user tries to set it to Ultra High, an error message will pop-up.
Streamer
Many of the items that you can configure within Preference Policy can also be configured from within the Streamer UI. If a setting that you have configured in your policy is also part of the Streamer settings, the respective setting will be greyed out and cannot be configured from within the Streamer UI until detached from the policy. For example, since the blank screen setting has been enabled in the preference policy, this option is locked in the Streamer UI for all computers that this policy has been applied to.
If you remove the computer from the policy, or if you remove the item (in this case Blank Screen) from your policy, the setting can be configured from the Streamer UI again. However, its value will not automatically switch back to the default value (remember Blank Screen is turned off by default) but will keep the value it had been given to before.