When you create an application pool and manually specify an application, you can add information about the application. It is not a requirement that the application is already installed on any RDS host.

Table 1. Worksheet: Application Properties for Creating an Application Pool Manually
Property Description Fill in Your Value Here
Select an RDS Farm or Desktop Pool Select a farm or a desktop pool from the list of desktops with supported session type Application or Application and Desktop.
ID Unique name that identifies the pool in Horizon Administrator. This field is required.
Display Name Pool name that users see when they log in to Horizon Client. If you do not specify a display name, it will be the same as ID.
Version Version of the application.
Publisher Publisher of the application.
Path Full pathname of the application. For example, C:\Program Files\app1.exe. This field is required.
Start Folder Full pathname of the starting directory for the application.
Parameters Parameters to pass to the application when it starts. For example, you can specify -username user1 -loglevel 3.
Description Description of this application pool.
Pre-launch Select this option to configure an application so that an application session is launched before a user opens the application in Horizon Client. When a published application is launched, the application opens more quickly in Horizon Client.

If you enable this option, the configured application session is launched before a user opens the application in Horizon Client regardless of how the user connects to the server from Horizon Client.

If you enable this option on applications published from a desktop with session type Application and Desktop, the desktop session may not be available.

Note: Application sessions can be disconnected when the Pre-launch session timeout (applications only) option is set when you add or edit the application farm.
Connection Server Restrictions

You can restrict access to the application pool to certain Connection Servers by clicking Browse and selecting one or more Connection Servers.

If you intend to provide access to desktops through VMware Identity Manager, and you configure Connection Server restrictions, the VMware Identity Manager application might display desktops to users when those desktops are actually restricted. VMware Identity Manager users will be unable to launch these desktops.

Category Folder

Specifies the name of the category folder that contains a Start menu shortcut for the application pool entitlement on Windows client devices.

Client Restrictions

Select whether to restrict access to entitled application pools from certain client computers.

You must add the names of the computers that are allowed to access the application pool in an Active Directory security group. You can select this security group when you add users or groups to the application pool entitlement.

Multi-Session Mode

You can start published application sessions in the following modes:

Single-session: If the user opens a published application on client A in single-session mode, and then opens the same published application or another published application based on the same farm on client B then, the session on client A is disconnected and reconnected on client B.

Multi-session: If the user opens a published application on client A in multi-session mode, and then opens the same published application or another published application based on the same farm on client B, the published application remains open on client A and a new session of the published application opens on client B. Such sessions are logged off on disconnect. You cannot enable the session pre-launch feature when multi-session mode is enabled.

The multi-session mode has the following values:

  • Disabled. Multi-session mode is not supported.
  • Enabled (Default Off). Multi-session mode is supported, but it is disabled by default. To use multi-session mode, users must enable the Multi-Launch setting in Horizon Client 4.10 or later. If the user has an earlier version of Horizon Client, the application is always started in single-session mode.
  • Enabled (Default On). Multi-session mode is supported, and it is enabled by default. Users can disable multi-session mode by disabling the Multi-Launch setting in Horizon Client 4.10 or later. If the user has an earlier version of Horizon Client, the application is always started in single-session mode.
  • Enabled (Enforced). Multi-session mode is always enabled. Users cannot disable it in any version of Horizon Client and the application is always launched in multi-session mode. If the user has an earlier version of Horizon Client, users get the following error message: "This application does not support the requested launch mode."

When multi-session mode is enabled you can also configure the max-sessions count setting. This sets the maximum number of concurrent multi-sessions that can be started by a user for the same published application from different client devices.

You can open a published application from a client in both the single-session mode and multi-session mode, which is based on the multi-session mode configuration. In this case, the client has one single-session and one multi-session.

For more information about using the Multi-Launch setting, see the Horizon Client 4.10 documentation.

Note: This setting is not supported for applications based on a desktop pool.