The venerable Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) 2.2 was starting to show its age.

After a slight hiatus, RDCMan 2.7 is now available. Please say thank you to Julian Burger for the early Christmas present. Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) is a great tool to consolidate multiple RDP connections into a single window to prevent desktop clutter.

RDCMan 2.7 supports Windows 8, 8.1, Server 2012 and 2012 R2.

The tool can be obtained from the Microsoft download centre.

Update 3-2-2015:Highlighting the note below as folks are hitting the download link and not reading the notes. if you have the .RDG file in the installation folder, back it up before you upgrade to 2.7

Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Manager: An accidental discovery published the help file for RDCMan, quite possibly by mistake, so you can take a look before you install. It's worth noting this link isn't official at all, and therefore may disappear pretty quickly, but it's useful nonetheless.

RDCMan is a central place where you can organize, group, and manage your various Remote Desktop connections. This is particularly useful for system administrators, developers, testers, and lab managers who maintain groups of computers and connect to them frequently. As an example - my customer manages over 200 Exchange servers worldwide. The Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) investigates all reports of security vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products and services, and provides the information here as part of the ongoing effort to help you manage security risks and help keep your systems protected.

Installation Pointers

There are a couple of things worth noting about the tool:

It will install into the x86 Program Files folder on a x64 machine:

Microsoft Rdcm Download

C:Program Files (x86)MicrosoftRemote Desktop Connection Manager

Do not save your custom RDG files in the installation folder, just in case your local workstation dies and the file is gone. In addition to this, upgrading the tool will typically remove the installation folder thus removing your .RDG file in the process. All your connections will be lost….

I always keep my .RDG files in a subfolder of My Documents, which is a redirected folder to a file server.

The RDG files are portable, and you can share them within your organisation. For example, when you get a new admin give them a copy of the RDG files and they are able to review your list of servers and get connected easily – assuming they have the permissions….