Most applications run without modification in a Remote Desktop Services (formerly known as Terminal Services) environment and do not need to use the Remote Desktop Services API. The Remote Desktop Services API is primarily useful to client/server applications and applications for Remote Desktop Services administration.

The Remote Desktop Services API is a set of function calls into Wtsapi32.dll. This DLL is present on Microsoft Windows 2000 and later. These functions do not work on other Windows platforms. To design your application to run in both Remote Desktop Services and non-Remote Desktop Services environments, use run-time dynamic linking to check for the presence of Wtsapi32.dll. For more information, see Run-Time Linking to Wtsapi32.dll.

The Remote Desktop Services API enables applications to perform the following tasks in a Remote Desktop Services environment:

• Remote Desktop Services Administration, such as enumerating and managing Remote Desktop Session Host (RD Session Host) servers (formerly known as terminal servers) in a domain or enumerating and managing sessions and processes on an RD Session Host server.
• Enhancing client/server applications in a Remote Desktop Services environment.
• Using Remote Desktop Services Virtual Channels to communicate between client and server modules of an application.
• Setting and retrieving Remote Desktop Services specific user configuration information.

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Build date: 3/7/2012