Offline Grace Period and ThinApp Packages

The offline grace period is the period of time for which a virtualized application is allowed to launch and run on a Windows system without syncing with VMware Identity Manager.

ThinApp packages are virtualized Windows applications, and VMware Identity Manager can distribute these applications to Windows systems. When VMware Identity Manager distributes a ThinApp package to the Windows system for the first time for the user logged in to that system, the package's virtualized applications are registered on that Windows system for that user's use. The appropriate shortcuts are added to the Windows desktop, and the user can launch the virtualized applications using the shortcuts as for standard Windows applications installed to that system.

When a user launches one of the virtualized applications that was deployed to the Windows system by VMware Identity Manager, the ThinApp package requests permission to run from the ThinApp agent running on the system. The ThinApp agent verifies the following conditions.

• Verifies whether the application is registered on this Windows desktop for the logged-in user.
• Verifies whether the Windows system has synced with VMware Identity Manager within the allowed offline grace period.

If both of those conditions are true, the ThinApp agent allows the virtualized application to run.

The frequency of how often the VMware Identity Manager Desktop application syncs with VMware Identity Manager is set by the POLLINGINTERVAL installer option. By default, the frequency is every 5 minutes. The offline grace period is set to 30 days by default. If a Windows system has had network connectivity to connect to VMware Identity Manager at any time within a 30-day timespan, the application can sync with VMware Identity Manager and virtualized applications can run.

However, if the Windows system has no network connectivity to connect to VMware Identity Manager, the application cannot sync with VMware Identity Manager. Virtualized applications registered on that Windows system can run on the disconnected system up to the time set by the offline grace period.