Improve Accessibility of Reimage Option for Azure Compute Gallery Images

 

In NME, the option to reimage an existing desktop image from the Azure Compute Gallery is available, but it’s buried so deeply that we initially assumed it wasn’t possible. It seems other users have encountered the same confusion (see Jason Lucas's post from Nov 8, 19:07, on reimaging desktop images from gallery versions). I only discovered it was possible after raising the question with Fabian.

The problem is that this option is hidden under both "Set-as-Image" and within the Schedule section, which is off by default—making it effectively invisible. First, it’s not immediately clear to users that this functionality is linked to "Set-as-Image." Although I can see the developer’s reasoning after reviewing the logs, finding this feature in the Schedule section is even less intuitive, as users may want to use it as a one-off task without needing to enable scheduling. Typically, enabling a schedule is done after testing, not beforehand.

To improve accessibility, I’d recommend moving the option outside the Schedule section under "Set-as-Image" and adding it as a top-level option in the Image drop-down menu, perhaps labeled "Refresh from Azure Marketplace" or something similar. This would be a quick win for Nerdio, as it’s a valuable feature that many users are simply unaware of.

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Comments (4 comments)

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Toby Skerritt

Hi Paul Ofoche, thank you for this suggestion. i will capture it for discussion with our dev team. 

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Paul Ofoche

An additional point to add here based on Stefan Beckmann's comments on this post: Ability to reimage desktop image server from compute gallery versions – Nerdio Manager for Enterprise

If adding a top level option to refresh the image, why stop at Marketplace images? We should also have the ability to refresh from custom images. Therefore the option could be simply "Refresh Image", giving the option to refresh from Azure Gallery or custom images.

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Brian Bresnahan

I am also trying to use the functionality and found the same confusion.  Now that I see how to set it up I am having an additional problem.  I have it scheduled to occur 2 days after patch Tuesday, but the option to schedule the refresh it not saving in the schedule.  Is this by design?  We want a hands off rebuild of the master images and do not want to have to enable this option each time in the schedule.

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Thomas Schäfer

I would really agree to get the opportunity to use customized Compute Gallery Images for the “Refresh” Option in Set as Image

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