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If you’ve check out my previous post about 5 easy ways to look into the q: drive you are already familiar with several ways to get access to virtual environment of an application.

To complete this list here’s another one:

On the machine where you have successfully loaded the application run the following command:

sftmime /query obj:app /short

Now, this command should give you a (short) list of all the applications that you have currently in your App-V client.

So it will look something like this:

Microsoft Office Word 2007
Microsoft Office Word 2007
Microsoft Office Excel 2007
Microsoft Office Powerpoint 2007
SnagIt 8 8.1.0.0
Internet Explorer with Java 1.4.2

Now let’s say you want to run a command prompt in the virtual environment of SnagIt 8. To do so type the following command:

sfttray /EXE cmd.exe /launch "SnagIt 8 8.1.0.0"

The big advantage of this method is that it doesn’t require the registration of an additional application in the App-V client, when this is required if you copied an OSD and changed the name & version tags.

Microsoft has just released the Administrative Template which manages your App-V client environment settings. You can download it through connect.

Since the settings in the template are Preferences (not true policies) you have to set the filter to not only show policies that can be fully managed.

The settings that can be managed are:

Microsoft Application Virtualization Client \ Communication
Allow Independent File Streaming
Application Source Root
OSD Source Root
Icon Source Root
Set background loading triggers
Specify what to load in background
Disconnected Operations: Online
Disconnected Operations: Allow
Disconnected Operations: Fast Connect Timeout
Disconnected Operations: Limit Disconnected Operations
Reporting: Data Cache Limit
Reporting: Data Block Size

Microsoft Application Virtualization Client \ Permissions
Add Application
Change Cache Size
Change File System Drive
Change Log Settings
Permission to Load Application
Permission to Unload Applications
Permission to Lock Applications
Permission to manage file type associations
Permission to trigger Publishing Refresh
Permission to modify the OSD file.
Permission to Import Applications
Permision to Change Publishing Refresh Settings
Permission to Manage Publishing Servers
Permission to Publish Shortcuts
Permission to View all Applications
Permission to repair applications
Permission to clear applications
Permission to delete applications
Permission to Toggle into Offline Mode

Microsoft Application Virtualization Client \ Client Interface
Tray: always run
Tray: Success display delay
Tray: show refresh
Tray: show load
Log Roll-over count
Log Max Size

Generally the settings in the GPO should not require a reboot which is why some other settings (such as the Root Drive or the Cache size) are probably not in the adm file.

Also important: This ADM (as well as the client) should be used in a non-production environment only.

Have fun!

Yeah! I’ve convinced Ment van der Plas, who has been blogging on http://desktopcontrol.blogspot.com/ for a while now and is a decent answerer on the Technet Forums, to post his App-V related content on http://www.SoftGridBlog.com. So we are one step closer of becoming the biggest App-V / SoftGrid related website with valuable and real world content for the community.

Also, to consolidate as much information as possible, Ment was already so kind to post all his previous blogs on here as well. Here is a list of his previous posts:

• Channel 9: John Sheehan about Application Virtualization
• SoftGrid becomes App-V
• The case of the SoftGrid dependent virtual application
• How to deploy SoftGrid MSI’s under Limited User context
• SoftGrid: 5 easy ways to look inside the Q-drive
• Deploying Microsoft Virtual Applications (SoftGrid) through GPO assignment
• What does the MSIDEPLOYMENT=TRUE do?
• The MSI Utility explained pt.2
• The MSI Utility Explained

All great stuff. Check it out if you haven’t, you will learn!

From connect.microsoft.com:

The Download for the RC release of SoftGrid 4.5 has been updated to have a new version of the Desktop Client and Management Server. The new build number for each component is 4.5.0.1308.

What’s changed?

For the Desktop Client:

• We fixed an issue that makes sure the integration with the recently-released RC of SCCM 2007 R2 works as expected after an upgrade of the App-V client.
• We fixed a problem that was causing some applications to launch slower than expected when the client was installed on a system that also had CA’s eTrust Antivirus product installed and performing real-time monitoring.
  For the Management Server:
• We fixed an issue that caused Publishing Refresh to fail if a user was a member of a large number of Active Directory groups.

As you might know I work for Login Consultants. I’m very happy and proud to welcome another App-V (SoftGrid) MVP to our Consulting team. Falko Graefe is the only App-V MVP in Germany, and together with me, Login Consultants now has 2 out of 5 App-V MVP’s worldwide in it’s Consulting team.

Login Consultants also has the pleasure of Terminal Server MVP Bernhard Tritsch and Deployment MVP Martin Zugec working for them.

There is a very nice video over at Channel 9 in which John Sheehan, the primary architect of Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly the chief architect of Softricity) digs into the details of how app-v works.

Some highlights:
1′ Introduction App-V
4′ Conflictfree application deployment
9′ App-V shortcuts & FTA’s
15′ Limitations
20′ High Level Architecture
24′ User mode & Kernel mode processes
30′ Virtual Registry & Virtual FS
32′ Communication between virtual applications
35′ App-V and Visual Studio
38′ Licensing App-V
40′ App-V and Terminal Services
46′ Server Virtual Applications
49′ App-V and VDI
50′ Background of John Sheehan
Or check out at source

Have fun!

I just got pinged by someone from the MDOP Product Management Team that they just opened their Official MDOP Blog. MDOP stands for Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack which consists of a set of products which includes App-V and the recently aquired technology from Kidaro (renamed to Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization).

This is great and should give the community more insight on the other products within MDOP besides App-V.

Check it out; http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/

From the SoftGrid Blog at Technet:

Please note that due to changes to the Release Candidate (RC) version of Microsoft Application Virtualization, Process Monitor users will need to download the latest version of ProcMon (v1.34) available at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx . Earlier versions of the tool will continue to work but will no longer capture virtualized registry access.

After getting back from a very nice holiday, I found that Microsoft released the Release Candidate of App-V 4.5 on June 17th, building the buildnumber up to 4.5.0.1305. It can be downloaded from Microsoft Connect. Besides some GUI changes for the Sequencer there did get some new features in since the previous beta, like Streaming over HTTP, Client cache changes and overall improvements on some of the features that where new to version 4.5.

I especially like the Streaming over HTTP part, where you don’t need any App-V component installed on a backend to stream applications. Please keep in mind you do need at least one Application Virtualization Management Server to automatically populate user’s their desktops with App-V enabled application shortcuts and file type associations.

So put one (or 2 for redundancy with NLBS) App-V Management Server centrally for App-V clients to authenticate and refresh against, and let the actual application streaming from the App-V client take place from the nearest IIS server that holds the Virtualized Applications.