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On this page, you can assign policies for pre-existing user groups that you can set up in Parallels My Account. Each user group is a sublicense of your main Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition license with a unique key.

To create user groups and populate them with users, please refer to this page.

To create a new policy, click on the Add button in the top left corner of the page.

Presently, policies only define what users from your organization can do with their Parallels Desktop setups and not their virtual machines. The four available settings are:

• Limit users to corporate virtual machines only. This policy prevents users from setting up new virtual machines from sources other than your organization’s Golden Images, as well as importing or cloning pre-existing ones. You may want to enact this policy to prevent members of your organization from setting up virtual machines for their own extracurricular activities;

• Limit the number of corporate virtual machines per user to one. This setting prevents users from installing any more virtual machines from the approved sources (i.e., your organization’s Golden Images). Note: If you select this option alone, without the previous option, users will still be able to add new virtual machines using third-party sources, such as the default images available through Parallels Desktop;

• Do not allow removing corporate virtual machines;

• Do not allow upgrading to the next major Parallels Desktop version. This setting will still allow users to update their Parallels Desktop installations to a minor version (e.g., 20.0 to 20.1) but will prevent them from upgrading to a major version (e.g., from 20.x to 21.x) when it becomes available. Enabling this setting will allow you to first ensure that a major new version suits your needs before proceeding with a fleet-wide upgrade. Note: This setting will have no effect if your organization is running a local update server, or your update policies are managed via an MDM solution.

When adding a new policy, provide the following information:

1. Name. Use a unique descriptive name in case the number of policies increases in the future;

2. Description;

3. User group. This setting allows you to add and remove the groups that the policy applies to. To add a group, select one from the drop-down list and click Add. To remove one already added, click on the Trash Can symbol next to the one already listed;

4. Set the restrictions as described above;

5. Click Add.

The default view of the main Policies screen shows you the list of all the policies under your management, citing their names as provided during the setup process, their descriptions, and the list of groups they apply to. Right-clicking on a policy from the list allows you to edit or delete it.

This section of the Management Portal is where you go to designate the virtual machines that will be deployed across your organization.

At the moment, it contains sections for two virtual machine files available to all Parallels Desktop users in an organization, one for all your Apple silicon Macs and one for Intel Macs.

When adding a virtual machine for deployment, the following three fields are mandatory:

1. Name. Give the virtual machine a descriptive, easy-to-read name, e.g., {company_name} Windows 11 Pro for Arm;

3. Checksum (SHA-256). When packaging a virtual machine (right-click on it in the Control Center and choose Prepare for Transfer), the resulting .pvmp file is accompanied by a .txt file containing a SHA-256 checksum for it. Copy and paste the contents of that file in this field.

This section allows you to monitor all the Parallels virtual machines in use with your organization and delete them in case of need. The list shows not only the corporate machines installed from the , but also other virtual machines running on your users' Parallels Desktop installations.

You can use the drop-down menu in the top-left corner to select which of the following parameters you want to monitor:

• User name. This parameter is derived from the user account name on that Mac;

• Computer name;

• VM name. As designated during the virtual machine’s image preparation process;

• VM state. This parameter has the following possible values: Running, Stopped, Suspended, Unknown;

• VM status. This parameter will help you sort between active virtual machines, the ones whose Parallels Desktop setup had been deactivated, and the ones that have failed to delete;

• VM OS, VM Edition, VM OS build. This sorts your organization’s virtual machines by the operating systems, including editions and build numbers;

• VM Source. This parameter helps you indentify which virtual machines were set up using your company's ;

• Last used date (UTC). This shows when the particular virtual machine was last launched. This parameter may help you quickly find unused virtual machines;

• Last reported date (UTC). This parameter shows the date and time a specific virtual machine’s presence was reported to the server;

• Parallels Desktop version. This shows the major version number of the Parallels Desktop installation used to run a particular virtual machine. This may help you identify installations that have failed to upgrade to a newer, better version of Parallels Desktop;

• Parallels Tools Version. Using this parameter, you can, for example, identify the machines in your organization that either do not have Parallels Tools installed or use an outdated version;

• Mac serial number;

• CPU. In this column, you can sort your virtual machines by their operating systems’ target architecture: Intel or Arm (Apple silicon);

Uncheck the parameters you won’t need for your monitoring requirements.

Use the drop-down menu in the bottom-right corner to adjust the number of virtual machines shown per page from 10 to 40.

Use the search bar in the top right corner to find virtual machines by their known parameters, or use the individual filters in each column to search by that column’s parameter. Clicking on the funnel symbol in the header of each column will help you filter virtual machines by a specific parameter.

This may, for example, help you quickly identify the machines that require your immediate attention when an urgent upgrade is required to plug a known severe vulnerability.

Deleting a specific virtual machine

Once you have located a specific virtual machine, you can delete it by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete Virtual Machine. Read the dialog carefully and confirm by clicking Delete.

Once your organization’s Parallels Desktop setup grows beyond a couple of dozen machines, the need often arises to manage them more granularly while relying less on manual procedures for things like setup, updates, and maintenance.

Thankfully, one of the main features of Parallels Desktop Enterprise Edition is the Parallels Management Portal — your one-stop shop for setting up and controlling your entire fleet of Parallels Desktop installations and virtual machines.

This section of the guide deals with all the tasks that can be completed from the Management Portal, such as deployment, management, policy provisioning, and removal of virtual machines.

You can reach the Management Portal by clicking the respective button in your Parallels My Account business profile or directly following this link.