DirectFlex not working with Bloomberg Professional?

[VDIMega]

If you launch wintrv.exe (defined in the directflex settings), bberg launches with the desired serial number and other settings.

However, if a user launches excel.exe, and excel.exe's Bloomberg plugin pops up (bbcomm.exe) asking the user to log into Bloomberg, nothing is loaded and the user is prompted to create a new serial number.

Has anyone seen this?  The issue seems to be when the user does not directly launch Bloomberg, but rather gets to it through Excel/PowerPoint.  This is true with Office 2010 and 2016.

[Pim_van_de_Vis]

Hi,

Bloomberg is known by me to cause problems with the DirectFlex hook. The application has build-in security checks that can be triggered by hooking.

The solution with other customers was to add the bloomberg executable(s) to the UEM blacklist.

Blacklisting a process in VMware User Environment Manager 8.6 is managed by the BlackList.XML file. This file does not exist by default.

To create and manage the BlackList.XML file:

1. Create a new folder called DirectFlex within the \\Server\FlexConfigShare\General\FlexRepository folder.
2. Within the DirectFlex folder, create a text file named Blacklist.XML.
3. Add this content to the Blacklist.XML file:
   
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <userEnvironmentSettings>
   <setting type="blacklist" list="" />
   </userEnvironmentSettings>
4. Save the Blacklist.XML file with UTF8 encoding.
5. Add the processes you want to blacklist in the field list="".
   
   For example:
   
   list="notepad.exe"
   Note: Use | to specify more than one process.
   
6. Restart your system for the changes to take effect.

[VDIMega]

Thanks for the prompt reply!  That procedure would exempt Bloomberg from DirectFlex.  This is not an option for us, unfortunately.

I worked around this by having UEM predefine the following if "c:\blp" exists:

Registry
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "bxlartd.exe"="c:\\blp\\api\\office tools\\bxlartd.exe"

This causes the process that Bloomberg Office Addins require to load ahead of time, which triggers Directflex to load all the Bloomberg settings correctly before the user gets a chance to open Excel/Word/Bloomberg/PowerPoint/etc.  bxlartd.exe loads very quickly and silently so the user doesn't notice.