Hi Steve,
I work for an educational institution. Our Lab environment is built with 1 image running over 400 applications. These applications are a mixture of locally installed and run from a network drive. The default user desktop is populated with shortcuts to folders
containing the application shortcuts. These application shortcuts are manually created on the file server and either points to the locally installed path for a particular application or the network path. This allows us to maintain one network location for
all applications that we offer. It also allows us to maintain a persistent file structure for all staff and students.
We introduced App-V 4.6 into our lab environment with a standalone model with streaming. We deployed our sequenced applications via GPO/MSI and placed a shortcut to the sequenced application on the root of c:\ in a folder called shortcuts. In order to maintain
the current method of deploying application shortcuts to our default user profile, we again manually created a shortcut to the sequenced application on our network share and pointed it to the newly deployed shortcut in C:\shortcuts. We also used this
shortcut file as a check in a machine start-up script to see if the sequenced application had been installed on the client machine. If it was not present we run the MSI file to have the virtual application deployed.
When we start to create next year’s lab build we are looking to introduce app-v 5 and sequence as many applications as possible from our current portfolio. This is with the view to reaping the benefits that App-V brings to the table.
The current method that we use to deploy the application shortcuts has worked very well for us and we were looking to implement App-v 5 but utilise our current methodology for provisioning user shortcuts.
So end goal, if I can publish the application shortcuts into c:\shortcuts\ then we can utilise our current model.
If I use a built in app-v 5 token [{Common Programs}] to deploy a target shortcut it works perfectly.
<Extension Category="AppV.Shortcut">
<Shortcut>
<File>[{Common Desktop}]\Shortcuts\FileZilla Client.lnk</File>
<Target>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla\filezilla.exe</Target>
<Icon>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla\filezilla.exe.0.ico</Icon>
<Arguments />
<WorkingDirectory>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla</WorkingDirectory>
<ShowCommand>1</ShowCommand>
<ApplicationId>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla\filezilla.exe</ApplicationId>
</Shortcut>
However if I place a shortcut for the application at time of sequencing in c:\shortcuts the following code is captured by the sequencer:
<Shortcut>
<File>[{AppVPackageDrive}]\Shortcuts\FileZilla Client.lnk</File>
<Target>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla\filezilla.exe</Target>
<Icon>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla\filezilla.exe.0.ico</Icon>
<Arguments />
<WorkingDirectory>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla</WorkingDirectory>
<ApplicationId>[{ProgramFilesX86}]\FileZilla\filezilla.exe</ApplicationId>
</Shortcut>
This does not create a shortcut to the application.
The only main difference I can see is that the app-v 5 token [{Common Desktop}]\ was changed to reflect the different path and shows [{AppVPackageDrive}]\ which according to the App-V 5 Sequencing Guide white paper should translate to C:.
Note: There is another container that is displayed <ShowCommand>1</ShowCommand> however manually adding this into the XML config file and re-publishing does not appear to resolve.
I believe it may have something to do with this [{AppVPackageDrive}]\ token but I am still relatively new to app-v so this may not be the issue.
For information my client machine is a base install of Windows 7 SP1 x86 with the app-v client and pre-requisites.
I appreciate that the current model we use to provision user applications may not be best practice , but this aside if we could publishing a custom shortcut to the required location on the root of c:\ like we can do with 4.6 sequencer then this would be
1 of the hurdles moving to app-v 5 out of the way.
Any ideas or assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Neil
