If you ever read about the history of the Provision Networks division of Quest Software you’ll know that Provision Networks was originally a spinoff out of a Citrix Platinum reseller. The spinoff was a result of years of creating tools that helped people solve problems that Citrix did not allow them to solve. I recently re-discovered a feature in our product that is a perfect example of this: the App Wizard. The name does not do it enough justice because it allows you to bulk-publish applications in just about every way you can think of. Let’s take a short look at some of the features of the App Wizard.

This little gem is actually hidden in the Resource node of the Provision Management Console (affectionately referred to as the PMC). When you take a look at the left pane of the PMC , you’ll find the icon for the App Wizard:

When you click the toolbar button it will launch the App Wizard. The App Wizard is a three step wizard. The first step is where you select the applications you want to publish:

Notice all the different options you have to easily find the applications you want to publish. You can:

• Browse the Start Menu and select applications from there
• Query Windows Installer for installed applications
• Find a certain application executable (one that isn’t in the Start Menu for example)
• You can list all the programs in a certain folder
• Finally you can check the entire registry for installed applications and proceed from there.

If that does not find the applications you need then , trust me, it’s not there to start with. In this example we’ll search a certain folder to publish all Office applications we need to publish. When you’ve selected the folder the PMC will scan for applications installed into that directory. The applications get listed in the main pane. Just select the applications you want to publish and select “remove unselected” (or the other way around). Clicking next takes us to step 2: stetting the properties of the applications to be published:

The properties of publishing an application fall into one of four categories:

• Provision IT settings:
  • Workload Evaluators (what load balancing rule should apply to the application?)
  • Session Sharing (should the application be session shared?)
  • Client Shortcut Locations (where should shortcuts be place when running the GUI-less version of AppPortal)
• Servers: which Terminal Server(s) should the application be published to?
• Access Control Group: the Virtual Access suite allow for very granular control as to which programs can be executed on a server. These controls can be grouped. With this option you can assign the application to (or create) one of these access control groups.
• Startup Mode: allows you to select the startup behavior of the published application:
  • Normal
  • Maximized
  • Minimized.

Once you have set the properties of the published application you are ready to publish the applications! Clicking next brings you to the validation screen which checks if you have completed all prerequisites for successful application publishing:

And finally clicking finish would create the published applications for you (well, actually we’ll ask you if you are really sure but then you’re done). Easy, extremely powerful and just one of the many features. Want to try it out for yourself? Just create an account on Provisionnetworks.com, download the Virtual Access Suite and get convinced!

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