With the Unity Touch feature, tablet and smart phone users can quickly navigate to a remote desktop application or file from a Unity Touch sidebar. Although end users can specify which favorite applications appear in the sidebar, for added convenience, administrators can configure a default list of favorite applications.
If you use floating-assignment desktop pools, the favorite applications and favorite files that end users specify will be lost when they disconnect from a desktop unless you activate roaming user profiles in Active Directory.
The default list of favorite applications list remains in effect when an end user first connects to a desktop that is activated with Unity Touch. However, if the user configures their own favorite application list, the default list is ignored. The user's favorite application list stays in the user's roaming profile and is available when the user connects to different machines in a floating or dedicated pool.
If you create a default list of favorite applications and one or more of the applications are not installed in the remote desktop operating system, or the paths to these applications are not found in the Start menu, the applications do not appear in the list of favorites. You can use this behavior to set up one primary default list of favorite applications that can be applied to multiple virtual machine images with different sets of installed applications.
For example, if Microsoft Office and Microsoft Visio are installed on one virtual machine, and Windows Powershell and VMware vSphere Client are installed on a second virtual machine, you can create one list that includes all four applications. Only the installed applications appear as default favorite applications on each respective desktop.
You can use different methods to specify a default list of favorite applications:
- Add a value to the Windows registry on the virtual machines in the desktop pool
- Create an administrative installation package from the Horizon Agent installer and distribute the package to the virtual machines
- Run the Horizon Agent installer from the command line on the virtual machines
Prerequisites
- Verify that Horizon Agent is installed on the virtual machine.
- Verify that you have administrative rights on the virtual machine. For this procedure, you might need to edit a registry setting.
- If you have floating-assignment desktop pools, use Active Directory to set up roaming user profiles. Follow the instructions provided by Microsoft.
Users of floating-assignment desktop pools will be able to see their list of favorite applications and favorite files every time they log in.
Procedure
What to do next
If you performed this task directly on a virtual machine (by editing the Windows registry or installing Horizon Agent from the command line), you must deploy the newly configured virtual machine. You can create a snapshot or make a template and create a desktop pool, or recompose an existing pool. Or you can create an Active Directory group policy to deploy the new configuration.