When you define a Horizon Smart Policy in Dynamic Environment Manager, you can add conditions that must be met for the policy to take effect. For example, you can add a condition that deactivates the client drive redirection feature only if a user connects to the remote desktop from outside your corporate network. Note that you can also enable a policy without adding conditions and the policy can still take effect.

You can add multiple conditions for the same remote desktop feature. For example, you can add one condition that enables local printing if a user is a member of the HR group and another condition that enables local printing if the remote desktop is in the Win7 pool.

For detailed information about adding and editing conditions in the Dynamic Environment Manager Management Console, see VMware Dynamic Environment Manager Administration Guide.

Using the Horizon Client Property Condition

When a user connects or reconnects to a remote desktop, Horizon Client gathers information about the client computer and the connection broker sends that information to the remote desktop. You can add the Horizon Client Property condition to a Horizon Policy definition to control when the policy takes effect based on the information that the remote desktop receives.

Note: The Horizon Client Property condition is effective only if a user launches the remote desktop with the PCoIP display protocol or the VMware Blast display protocol. If a user launches the remote desktop with the RDP display protocol, the Horizon Client Property condition has no effect.

Predefined Properties for the Horizon Client Property Condition describes the predefined properties that you can select from the Properties drop-down menu when you use the Horizon Client Property condition. Each predefined property corresponds to a ViewClient_ registry key.

Table 1. Predefined Properties for the Horizon Client Property Condition
Property Corresponding Registry Key Description
Client location ViewClient_Broker_GatewayLocation Specifies the location of the user's client system. Valid values are as follows:
  • Internal - the policy takes effect only if a user connects to the remote desktop from inside the corporate network
  • External - the policy takes effect only if a user connects to the remote desktop from outside the corporate network

For information about defining the internal and external network by setting the gateway location for a Connection Server, see Configure the Gateway Location for a Horizon Connection Server in Horizon.

For information about setting the gateway location for an Access Point appliance, see the Deploying and Configuring VMware Unified Access Gateway document.

Launch tag(s) ViewClient_Launch_Matched_Tags Specifies one or more tags. Separate multiple tags with a comma or semicolon. The policy takes effect only if the tag that enabled the remote desktop or application launch to occur matches one of the specified tags.

For information about assigning tags to connection broker instances and desktop pools, see your Setting Up document.

Pool name ViewClient_Launch_ID Specifies a desktop or application pool ID. The policy takes effect only if the ID of the desktop or application pool the user selected when launching the remote desktop or application matches the specified desktop or application pool ID. For example, if the user selected the Win7 pool and this property is set to Win7, the policy takes effect.
Note: If more than one application pool is launched in the same RDS host session then the value is the ID of the first application that is launched from Horizon Client.

The Properties drop-down menu is also a text box, and you can manually enter any ViewClient_ registry key in the text box. Do not include the ViewClient_ prefix when you enter the registry key. For example, to specify ViewClient_Broker_URL, enter Broker_URL.

You can use the Windows Registry Editor (regedit.exe) on the remote desktop to view the ViewClient_ registry keys. Horizon Client writes client computer information to the system registry path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment on remote desktops that are deployed on single-user machines. For remote desktops that are deployed in RDS sessions, Horizon Client writes the client computer information to the system registry path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment\x, where x is the session ID on the RDS host.

Using Other Conditions

The Dynamic Environment Manager Management Console provides many conditions. The following conditions can be especially useful when creating policies for remote desktop features.

Group Member
You can use this condition to configure the policy to take effect only if a user is a member of a specific group.
Remote Display Protocol
You can use this condition to configure the policy to take effect only if the user selects a particular display protocol. The condition settings include RDP, PCoIP, and Blast.
IP Address
You can use this condition to configure the policy that takes effect only if a user connects from inside or outside the corporate network. Use the condition settings to specify an internal IP address range or an external IP address range.
Note: You can also use the Client location property in the Horizon Client Property condition.

For descriptions of all the available conditions, see the VMware Dynamic Environment Manager Administration Guide document.