How can I change the RDS Application Icon which appear in VMware Horizon View Client ?

[iCMaii]

Hi,

I have to deploy the application pools to the user in VMware Horizon View environment using RDS feature on the Windows Server 2012. When I tried to publish the application I noticed that the icon is a little bit strange.

If I select the application from the lists, the application show up with right icons -- such as (remote desktop, notepad, wordpad, IE, paint)
But if I add the application manually, there are something wrong the application show up only "A" icon. If I add more applications, the icon are the same picture. -- see an attachment below.

Can I change the icon appear on the Horizon View Client ? How can I change it ?

Thanks in advance.
PM

[LarryBlanco2]

I second this.   Anyone have any insight?

[grossag]

Unfortunately I'm not aware of a way to override the application icon.  I will try and ask around and see what I can find though; maybe there's an undocumented way to hack it in LDAP.

The issue that you are running into is not that you manually added the application, but instead that the application has a nonstandard extension (.s8l) that we don't recognize as an application, so we don't enumerate the icon.  Are you able to file a SR with VMware to request that we fix icon enumeration for this application?

[grossag]

I don't have any SAP experience so I'm hoping you can teach me a bit about it.  Is the .s8l file an executable format or a data file?  If it's a file that is opened by a SAP process, is it the default handler for .s8l files?  Can you just entitle the SAP application path and provide the path to the .s8l file as a command-line argument?

[dwigz]

You will probably have to use Orca or some kind of installation customization method.  I ran into some weird stuff with ThinApp and icons.  The RDS host is really just pulling info from a DLL that has the .ico file in it.  If you could change the icon at the Windows OS level via the system properties, that might work.

[loganhsmith2012]

In the past, I've just created a shortcut to the application, changed the icon on the shortcut, and then published the shortcut.  You'll have to create the hosted application manually, but it should work.  The shortcut extension is .LNK.

[dwigz]

I think what happens is somehow, during the application installation, it referenced the wrong icon.  One trick I forgot to mention.  You can use 7z to actually open and explore the .DLL files in the installation like a zip file.  I just had to dig through the installation folders (copy them local if it's a .ISO), but I eventually found the .ico file that I wanted to use for the icon.  From there, you can extract that .ico file, save it to a folder that all users can read from, maybe create C:\Windows\System32\CustomIcons, and save your icon there.  Then you can change the icon to the one you prefer.  Sometimes you can just find the icon file you want online too, but if it is part of the app, it is in one of those install .DLL's.

[grossag]

The issue here is that it is a custom file extension and we have code that only looks for .exe in order to parse a file as a binary and thus read icons from the binary's manifest.  If someone could confirm the file formats for these SAP applications, I would be happy to file a bug internally.

[martinmxt]

Hello,

I'm also having the same problem.

Every manually created published app doesn't show the correct icon (also if it's a standard executable, for example: putty.exe). The workaround with the shortcut and the icon file doesn't work for me.

These applications are also shown as unavailable in the admin webinterface:

This causes the dashboard to show the RDS Farm in error state:

I've upgraded from view 6.0.1 to view 6.2.2 with the expectation that this problem is solved after more than one year of presence.

Does anyone have a solution for this problem yet?

best regards

[grossag]

This PuTTY issue sounds different.  I did a local test where I downloaded it, put it at c:\putty.exe, and added it manually in the Admin UI and verified that it worked properly (screenshot attached).  It seems particularly relevant that you are getting the error that the View Connection Server cannot find the application.  It periodically asks the View Agent to confirm that an application still exists, so there must be some breakdown there.

How many RDS hosts do you have in the farm?  Do all have the application in the same place (C:\temp\putty.exe)?  Also please verify that all users (as well as SYSTEM) have read access to that file.

[grossag]

Just wanted to let you know that we have put this on our roadmap to address.  I don't have a committed date to share but we are looking at addressing this.

There is more that I can do to help if anyone answers my questions about the SAP file format and ideally files an SR.  But for now, there is nothing else I can do on my end.

[richrich668]

Requesting the ability to add a different icon from the VMWare Dialog screen as well.  Adding icon through the shortcut does work but requires a lot more work and in some instances does not work.

[curtisbrown_01]

I cracked it using this approach:

http://xtravirt.com/horizon-view-app-publishing-custom-icons/blog

Might help.

[MtAlex]

I agree with the shortcut method and pointing to a local .ico file if possible.

The other thing I just found while looking this up, is that (at least with RDS Applications) if you go into the Horizon Admin and click to edit your application pool, then click OK without changing anything, it updates the application icon in the Horizon client from next launch. The application and icon locations need to be valid of course.