RemoteApp drive mapping

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Hi Mike,

I have a WSE 2016 and mostly work remotely via AccessAnywhere to my VM desktop on the WSE LAN. I have recently installed RemoteApp 2016 to allow us to run some MS Access apps remotely. When I launch the Access remote app I don’t get my normal drive mappings to shared folders on the lan.

What’s the best way of sorting that?

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Best Answer
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If you have a script that automatically creates your mapped network drives when you log into your VM desktop, then you should just be able to publish that script as a RemoteApp program in WSE RemoteApp and have it run automatically when your user’s RemoteApp sessions first start. Here’s how I’d approach it:

1. Open the server Dashboard and go to the main “WSE REMOTEAPP” page.

2. Click on the “RemoteApp Programs” subtab, and then click on the “Publish RemoteApp Programs” task.

3. Click on the “Add Another Program” button in the Publish RemoteApp Programs wizard that opens, locate/open your script file, and finish out the rest of the wizard in order to publish the script file as a RemoteApp program in WSE RemoteApp.

NOTE: I don’t know what format your script file is in (as you didn’t say), but I’ll assume that it’s in a standard “Windows Batch File (.BAT)” format here. If it’s not, then you can try typing “*.*” (without the quotes) into the “File name” field and hitting the enter key so that the File Open dialog box now shows all file types (instead of it only showing the file types that WSE RemoteApp supports by default), and then select your script file from there. That “should” work as long as the server itself supports the file type of your script file (i.e. as long as it can be successfully executed on the server). Otherwise, you should just be able to open up Notepad, type in the command for executing your script, and save it as a .BAT file (while making sure that Notepad doesn’t append a “.txt” file extension onto the end of the batch file name).

NOTE: The script/batch file will need to be placed within a folder on the server that the users (who are going to be running it) have read permission to access. If only one of your users needs access to the script/batch file, then I recommend placing it in their specific “Users” shared folder on the server (e.g. “\\YOURSERVERNAME\Shared Folders\Users\Mike“, etc.). Otherwise, you can place it in the server’s “Company” shared folder (e.g. “\\YOURSERVERNAME\Shared Folders\Company“), or create a new “Scripts” shared folder on your server (via the server Dashboard’s “STORAGE” page), and grant read-only access to the new shared folder for your required users.

4. Once the script/batch file has been published, locate it in the list of published RemoteApp programs and double-click on it (or select it and click on the “View the RemoteApp program properties” task) in order to open the RemoteApp Properties wizard for it.

5. On the first panel of the wizard that opens, choose the “Yes” option under “Auto-start this RemoteApp program“, and then click the “Hide RemoteApp program from users” checkbox.

NOTE: You can skip this step if you’d rather have the scrip/batch file show up as a RemoteApp program in the main WSE RmeoteApp Launcher window. That way your users can manually execute it only when they require the mapped drives to appear in their RemoteApp session. If you go that route, then you can also give the script/batch file a more friendly name on this panel of the wizard, and change the icon for it to something different as well.

NOTE: If the script/batch file pops up a command window when it’s executed, and you’d rather not see that window flash on the screen, then you can create a shortcut to the script/batch file, and publish the shortcut to it instead of publishing the script/batch file directly. When you use a shortcut, you can then click on the “Properties” button on the first panel of the wizard, and in the Shortcut Properties dialog box that opens, you can choose to run it minimized.

6. Click “Next” and then on the second panel of the wizard, choose the “Only specific users and groups” option, and then check the boxes in front of the users who you want to have the script/batch file automatically execute for when they first start their RemoteApp sessions. Otherwise, if you want the script/batch file to execute for all of your users, then leave the default “All users that have been allowed access to WSE RemoteApp” option selected.

7. Click “Save” to save your changes.

That’s it… Now anytime your users start a RemoteApp session, the script/batch file will automatically get executed, and the network drives should get mapped.

Lastly… I’ll just mention that a better way of handing this in Essentials is to add new shared folders for your drives (via the “STORAGE” page of the server Dashboard), and then grant access for your users to the shared folders as required. I personally don’t mess around with using mapped network drives in Essentials seeing as going the shared folder route is a MUCH better option IMHO.

I hope that helps you out some.

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0

Thanks Mike, all makes sense and works well.

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