2008 Terminal server EZY published app

Question

Initial testing of 2008 Terminal Services I had read about the published apps feature and was keen to test it in an EzyWine scenario. It was very easy to setup and configure but I quickly ran into a problem. There is no obvious way to specify a “Start In” folder for each published app.

There is an MS workaround which requires modifying the app .ini file on the client side to specify a “Start In” folder. This I found was not a very good solution.

Answer

Here is the Ezy Systems work around.

 

1. Download the small executable from the following link.
   EzyWine Published App Setup
   EzyPOS Published App Setup
2. Move this file to the ‘foxfxp’ folder on the EzyWine host server.
3. Create a published app on the terminal server to execute the file ‘ezy_publish_app.exe’
4. Specify the ‘Start In’ folder in the setup field ‘Always use the following command-line arguments’. It is best to encapsulate the path in double quotes even if there are no spaces in the path name.

This will solve your problem and should still work even if MS bring out an upgrade to 2008 terminal services.

One issue we see a lot is EzyWine database tables being locked by user disconnected RDP sessions, published apps on terminal server are less confusing to the end user as there is no app window inside an RDP client window and when the user exits EzyWine the RDP session is terminated cleanly.