Moving to Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub Catalog

Migrating from the Legacy Web Clip App Catalog to Intelligent Hub

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 article for you. There are several considerations, and this guide covers them all. Find out everything you need to know to migrate successfully.

Purpose of this Tutorial

This guide introduces you to the Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub app catalog and takes you through the steps to enable the catalog, customize the experience for employees, and deactivate the legacy web clip app catalog. The various deployment considerations are explored, such as Omnissa Access SaaS versus on-prem, Workspace ONE UEM and Hub Services considerations. Lastly, you see how to add web clips, SaaS apps, virtual apps, and native apps to the catalog in both Workspace ONE UEM and Omnissa Access.

Audience

This guide is intended for IT administrators and product evaluators who are familiar with Workspace ONE Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) and legacy AirWatch. Knowledge of Omnissa Access is also helpful.

What and why

Before you implement the Intelligent Hub app catalog, it is important to understand why it is more beneficial than the legacy AirWatch web clip.

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, co-located with Workspace ONE Access, including a unified app catalog with single-sign-on, customized ‘For You’ notifications and corporate communications, self-service resources, 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 features available, you can read more in the article What Is Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub?

Comparing the Intelligent Hub App Catalog to 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 have the option to launch apps straight from the catalog.
Catalog can be accessed on any unmanaged device.
Completely unify the catalog with Omnissa Access and provide employees with single sign-on support for SaaS, virtual, web, as well as native apps.
Employees can access additional corporate resources from the same application – corporate comms, intranet web pages, self-service support tools, and more.

Implementing the Intelligent Hub App Catalog

This section explains how to enable the Intelligent Hub App catalog, customize the employee experience, and deactivate the legacy web Clip App Catalog in Workspace ONE UEM.

Prerequisites for Intelligent Hub and Hub Services

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
Omnissa Access tenant, SaaS or On-Premises
Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub (Android, iOS, macOS, Windows 10, or web browser)

Enabling 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.

From the Workspace ONE UEM admin console, click GROUPS & SETTINGS on the far left, then click Configurations.
If you see a settings experience notification, click GO TO CONFIGURATIONS.
Either use the search bar or scroll down and click Intelligent Hub.
Depending on whether Workspace ONE Access is already integrated with UEM or not, choose one of the following options:
1. 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.
2. If Omnissa Access is not already integrated with UEM, click the GET STARTED button, then enter the Omnissa Access tenant URL, username, and password in the Activate Hub Services dialog box to integrate UEM with Omnissa Access.
3. The Activate Hub Services dialog box appears:
4. After activating Hub Services, click LAUNCH to access the Hub Services admin console.

Customizing the Intelligent Hub App Catalog experience

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.

Click Launch to open the Hub Services admin console:
The starting point for the Intelligent Hub app catalog looks like this:
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.
Intelligent Hub branding and colors can be customized as well, to fit the organizational theme.

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

To learn more about customizing the Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub App Catalog, see this documentation.

Deactivating 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 staging 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 have 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.

Figure 5: Deactivating the Legacy Catalog options

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 Deployment Considerations

There are several other considerations, such as Omnissa Access deployment type (SaaS or on-prem), as well as Workspace ONE UEM and Hub Services version considerations.

Omnissa 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.

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 Device and User Enrollment Settings.

Figure 6: Enabling and configuring Hub Services via the Hub Integration tab

Hub Services Version Considerations

It is recommended that on-premises customers upgrade to the latest supported version of Omnissa Access before they migrate from the Legacy Web Clip Catalog to the Hub Catalog.

Creating a Unified App Catalog

Now that you have enabled the Intelligent Hub app catalog, this section is where you 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.

Check out these overview resources for creating a unified app catalog in Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub:

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

Figure 7: Setting the source of authentication for Intelligent Hub to Workspace ONE Access

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

Adding SaaS Apps to the Catalog in Workspace ONE Access

Review this documentation to learn how to add SaaS apps to the catalog via Omnissa Access.

Adding Virtual Desktops & Apps to the Catalog

To learn how to add virtual apps and desktops to the Intelligent Hub app catalog, see:

Adding Native Apps to the Catalog in Workspace ONE UEM

Review the following resources to understand how to add native applications via the Workspace ONE UEM admin console:

Windows App Management

macOS App Management

iOS App Management

Managing iOS Applications

Android App Management

Summary and Additional Resources

This guide introduced the Intelligent Hub app catalog, the procedures for enabling the catalog, customizing the employee experience, and deactivating the legacy web clip app catalog. A variety of deployment considerations were discussed, including Omnissa Access SaaS versus on-prem, Workspace ONE UEM and Hub Services considerations. And lastly, this guide provided the procedures for adding web clips, SaaS Apps, virtual apps, and native apps to the catalog in both Workspace ONE UEM and Omnissa Access.

Additional Resources

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

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

The following resources are also helpful:

Changelog

The following updates were made to this guide:

Date	Description of Changes
2024/11/11	Updated branding and links
2023/01/30	Clarified and updated content and screenshots Removed references to the automated virtual assistant (chatbot) in Intelligent Hub Republished in guide format
2021/07/07	Published in blog format

Author and Contributors

Christina Minihan, Staff Architect, Technical Marketing

Many thanks to the following for their contributions to this paper:

Sergey Belous, Alumnus
Marshall Anne Busbee, Product Line Manager

Feedback

Your feedback is valuable.

To comment on this paper, contact Omnissa Technical Marketing at tech_content_feedback@omnissa.com.