This article contains information about publishing Microsoft App-V applications through the Desktops only Delivery Group.

Background

XenDesktop 7.0 allows administrators to create the following three types of delivery groups:

• Desktop Only

• Desktops and Applications

• Applications only

In Applications only and Desktops and Applications groups, the App-V applications can be published by configuring the App-V Management and Publishing Server on Desktop Studio. Since Desktop only groups do not have the provision of publishing applications, they do not inherit the App-V server settings by default from the site level. Because of this, the user cannot use App-V applications on the desktops created.

With the preceding design, the administrator must manually configure the App-V Publishing server for the particular Desktop Group. There is no provision for this through User Interface, and this can be achieved using low level PowerShell SDK.

The administrator adds App-V Management and Publishing Server on Desktop studio at site level. Then create a Desktop only delivery group. Once it is created, the user tries to use the desktops and notices that there are no App-V apps on the machine.

Requirements

The administrator should install App-V Client on the Catalog machine before creating Desktop only delivery group to get App-V apps. A valid App-V Management server and Publishing Server must be running.

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Instructions

Execute the following PowerShell Commands on the Broker machine:

Get-BrokerDesktopGroup #Enumerates all the Desktop Groups at the site level
Get-BrokerMachineConfiguration –Name AppV* #Enumerates all AppV Blobs at site level
Add-BrokerMachineConfiguration –Name AppV\XYZ –DesktopGroup UID

UID is got from the output of the first commandlet

AppV/XYZ from the output of the second commandlet

Once configured, the Virtual Machines running under the particular Desktop Group will automatically see the App-V application shortcuts on desktop, Start menu. This is same as the native App-V client experience, except the fact that the configuration of the Publishing Server happens through Studio low level SDK and App-V VDA Integration components.

Notes:

• The Publishing Server should be different from the one specified for the Applications only delivery group if required.

• Microsoft App-V applications are not managed by Citrix XenDesktop. The administrator does not have the ability to remove App-V settings using the UI. In order to remove these App-V settings from the desktop, the administrator has to explicitly run Remove-BrokermachineConfiguration –Name AppV\XYZ –DesktopGroup DGName.

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This article contains information about publishing Microsoft App-V applications through the Desktops only Delivery Group.

Citrix Documentation - Get-BrokerMachineConfiguration