---
# source: src/content/solutions/en/omnissa/horizon/dynamic-environment-manager.md
# route:  /en/solutions/omnissa/horizon/dynamic-environment-manager/
title: Dynamic Environment Manager
tags: [modern-workplace, virtualization]
vendors: [omnissa]
summary: Carries the settings a user cares about instead of the whole profile, so there is less to load and signing in is faster.
photoNeed: "A Horizon or Workspace ONE session in use: a virtual desktop on a real screen, or a thin client on a real desk"
stub: false
draft: false
kind: product
formerly: User Environment Manager
acronym: DEM
addon: false
sourceNote: "soultec.ch, Omnissa Dynamic Environment Manager, read 2026-08-30: formerly called User Environment Manager"
vendorName: Omnissa Dynamic Environment Manager
status: current
practice: >
  Draft, not yet reviewed. We size the file share before the desktops. DEM writes small files often, and a share that was fine for departmental documents is not automatically fine for two thousand logons inside twenty minutes.
practiceReview: true
---

## What it is

Dynamic Environment Manager captures user settings rather than user profiles. A roaming
profile carries everything a person has ever touched; DEM carries only what an
administrator has named: the Windows personalisation, and the settings of individual
applications.

That difference shows up in the logon time, because there is far less to load.

## How it works

The FlexEngine agent starts when someone signs in, imports the environment and
personalisation settings, and then gets out of the way. Application settings are not part
of that. They are loaded by DirectFlex at the moment the application is opened and written
back when it is closed.

At logoff FlexEngine writes the remaining Windows personalisation back to the archive.

## What it needs

No management server. It runs on files: SMB shares from a file server you already have,
reachable on TCP 445, plus the agent on the desktops. Windows desktops, RDSH session hosts,
fat clients and VDI all use the same mechanism, so it can also be used in an estate that is
only partly virtual.

## The two editions

There are two: Standard and Enterprise. What Standard covers was sold as Persona
Management before it was folded in.

Two features are worth knowing by name whichever edition you land on. Self-Support lets a
person restore their own application settings from a backup or reset them to default
without opening a ticket, and the console can hide individual settings from that tool where
that is not wanted. The Helpdesk Support Tool gives the service desk the same search plus
the logs to investigate a profile problem.

## What to watch

Before buying DEM for slow logons, find out how long a logon actually takes and where the
time goes. The cause can also be an old login script.