Any way to force the View Client to close aftert a disconnect?

[rcmcguir]

I'm using URI's to launch specific desktops on our Mac OS X devices.  Which is fine since you can't use command line switches like Windows.

However, what is a problem is that the Horizon View client remains open and logged in after they disconnect or log off the virtual desktop.  So they can see all the different pools they are entitled to, that I don't really want them to see.  We want to control what the students connect to from where.  This makes it impossible to do so reliably.

So does anybody know a way to have it connect to the desktop and then exit the View Client or at least log off after they disconnect?

Thanks

[grossag]

Good question and I'm glad to hear of someone using the URI launch mechanism!  I would recommend trying the "unattended" schema flag, for example:

vmware-view://<server_url>/<desktop_name>?unattended=true

I'm not entirely sure that it will address your use case but I think that's the place to start.

[rcmcguir]

Thank you for the reply.  Unfortunately that didn't work.

According to the documentation "Using VMware Horizon View Client for Mac OS X"  [November 2013], the only "Queries" that are supported by the MAC OS X client are...

connectUSBOnInsert

connectUSBOnStartup

desktopLayout

desktopProtocol

domainName

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/horizon-view/horizon-view-client-mac-document.pdf      Page 16-17

I do have one way I can accomplish what I want. Which is to turn off SSO for the desktops in the pool and connect to the desktop with a generic account in AD that is only assigned to the one desktop pool.  That way they get connected with the generic account they only have one pool they can possibly connect to so I don't care if they see it in the menu.  Then they will login with their credentials after connecting to the desktop.

There are a couple issues I have with doing it this way, however.  One being that I still have to see how secure I can make the password embedded in the URI.  Students love to work around our security so I need to make sure they can't see the password for the accounts.  The other issue is that I would possibly have to change they way we deploy desktops to Windows desktops or other devices, simply because the MAC OS X devices can't be controlled the same way.  It would be nice if I could control the deployment of pool access the same way I can with the Windows desktops.

Maybe there is a better way to handle pool deployment, but I haven't seen it yet.

Again, thank you for the response.

[grossag]

Unfortunately you cannot pass the password as a URI parameter.  I am reaching out to other people internally to figure out whether the Mac client just needs to add support for the "unattended" URI parameter or whether we need something else entirely.

[grossag]

As an update, it doesn't seem like the "unattended" URI parameter would address your use case, even if the Mac client supported it (which it doesn't right now).  "unattended" is intended for fully-scripted use cases and the only way to be fully scripted in URI is to provide a SAML token for authentication that was generated by VMware Horizon Workspace.

So basically, I don't have anything to recommend to you right now but I am looking into alternatives that we could add in future releases of the Mac client.

[kdenike]

We have had this request before and have implemented this change in behavior, you should see the change in an upcoming release. But just to clarify, the user can still launch the client directly and see his entitlements, so it certainly isn't a foolproof solution.

[rcmcguir]

Thank you both for the great information.

Having the user able to launch the client themselves and login to see their desktops is fine.  That's the same behavior in the Windows client.  Students will just be less likely to connect to desktops that aren't approopriate for the given location if they aren't presented with a screen listing them all everytime they log off.

I look forward to the update and appriciate the great interest in customer feedback.

[kdenike · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I checked, and that change won't be in the next Mac client release but look for it in Q2.

Thanks, Kristina

[yuleyl]

There is a workaround that you can quit View Client directly when you want to disconnect via shortcut "CMD+Q" or top menu "VMware Horizon View Client"->"Quit VMware Horizon View Client".

And if you have only one desktop in the Desktop Selector, the View client will quit automatically after disconnected.

Thanks.

[kdenike]

Actually, can you clarify, are your students logging it with VMware Horizon Workspace?

[rcmcguir]

Nope, just the Horizon View Client.