You can use the Unity Filter rule list agent group policy setting to filter out unity windows, or map unity windows to a specific type, when using published applications. This feature is useful if you have a window display problem, such as a window that has a black background, or a drop-down window that is not sized correctly.
The Unity Filter rule list group policy setting is provided in the VMware View Agent Configuration ADMX template file (vdm_agent.admx), which is bundled in the VMware-Horizon-Extras-Bundle-YYMM-x.x.x-yyyyyyyy.zip file. For installation instructions, see Add the ADMX Template Files to Active Directory.
When you enable the Unity Filter rule list group policy setting, you click Show and type a filtering rule in the Value text box. A filtering rule is composed of characteristics and actions. If you specify the map action, you must also include a type. The following table lists the characteristics, actions, and types that you can use in filtering rules.
| Characteristics | Actions | Types |
|---|---|---|
| classname, company, product, major, minor, build, revision, style | block, map | normal, panel, dialog, tooltip, splash, toolbar, dock, desktop, widget, combobox, startscreen, sidepanel, taskbar, metrofullscreen, metrodocked |
The Windows class name is usually the preferred characteristic, for example, classname=CustomClassName. To further refine the filtering of windows with similar class names, you can use the style characteristic which lets you apply rules based on Microsoft window styles. The company, product, major, minor, build, and revision characteristics are provided in case you must limit rules to a specific product. You can find the values for these characteristics in the Properties window of an executable file.
The following rules apply to characteristic values:
- With the exception of classname and style, the values for these characteristics must be an exact case-sensitive match, including any special characters. If you provide multiple characteristics, all the values must match for the rule to apply to the window.
- The classname characteristic supports regular expression (regex) matches.
- In addition to exact case-sensitive matches, the style characteristic supports the " | " OR operator.
To specify an action, you type action=value, for example, action=block. The block action tells Horizon Agent not to show the window on the client. Use the block action when a window appears too large or interferes with normal window focus behavior on the client.
The map action, for example, action=map, tells Horizon Agent to treat the window as a certain hard-coded type. To specify the type, you must include type=value in the rule, for example, type=normal. Because determining if a window is mapped to the wrong type is difficult, mapping a window to a type is necessary only if VMware Support instructs you to do so.
Filtering Rule Examples
The following filtering rule blocks all windows that have the class name MyClassName.
classname=MyClassName;action=block
The following filtering rule blocks all windows from the product named MyProduct.
product=MyProduct;action=block
The following filtering rule maps a custom class to the combo box type.
classname=MyClassName;action=map;type=combobox
The following filtering rule uses regex matching to block all classes containing the prefix HwndWrapper in their name, such as HwndWrapper1, HwndWrapper123, and HwndWrapper[Sod.exe;;1cc83874-f028-4d07-af82-3213d1ce7815.
classname=HwndWrapper.*;action=block
The following filtering rule blocks all windows with a style of either WS_MINIMIZEBOX or WS_MAXIMIZEBOX.
style=WS_MINIMIZEBOX | WS_MAXIMIZEBOX;action=block
