How-To
How to Start a Horizon Session from the Taskbar or Start Menu
After earlier showing how to launch the Horizon Client to a Horizon desktop using a .bat file, Tom explores what else can be done with it.
In a previous article, I walked through how to launch the Horizon Client to a Horizon desktop using a .bat file. After writing that article, a couple of follow-on questions came to mind: Can I start a Horizon streaming application and specify a domain by using the vmware-view command? And how can I launch the .bat file from the taskbar or Start menu?
If you are not yet familiar with using the vmware-view command, I highly recommend reading the previous article mentioned above; in this article, I will only highlight the additional switches needed to launch an application and specify the user's domain with it.
To demonstrate how to start a Horizon application using a .bat file, I will show how I launched a ControlUp Console being streamed from VMware's TestDrive site. TestDrive is a sandbox service offered by VMware that allows you to work with VMware's and some of their partners' products.
Using the Horizon Client, I connected to TestDrive to see what desktops and applications were being streamed.
Being that I work for ControlUp and use TestDrive extensively, I created the .bat file listed below in the C:\Users\Fenton\Desktop\HrzCon folder so I could access it with a single double-click for demonstration purposes. I bolded the text that I added to my original command line which specifies the application and the domain for the user:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Horizon View Client\vmware-view.exe" -appName "ControlUp Console" -domainName VMWTD -userName user.name -password users.password -desktopLayout multimonitor -monitors "2" -serverURL Horizon.testdrive.vmware.com
This allowed me to connect to the streaming application without any issues after launching that .bat file.
Right-clicking the application icon or clicking the three dots will bring up a dialog that allows you to add it to the Start menu or create a shortcut to your desktop.
The start menu now has the icon on it.
The icon and the desktop are a shortcut to the folder C:\Users\Fenton\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu, which contains an internet shortcut to the streamed resource -- but it does not have the username or password in it. While this wouldn't be an issue for many users, I have so many passwords so I really like to have them preconfigured whenever possible. In order to do so, I needed to use the .bat file rather than this shortcut.
Unfortunately, when I right-clicked my .bat file, I didn't have the option to pin it to the taskbar or the Start menu. However, I was able to work around this issue by taking the steps listed below.
I right-clicked on my desktop and selected Shortcut from the New drop-down menu.
In the text box to specify the location, I entered the location of the .bat file preceded by cmd /c:
cmd /c C:\Users\Fenton\Desktop\HrzCon\ VMWTestDrive.bat
In the textbox to specify the name, I entered HRZ_TestDrive_CUp_RTC.
I could now right-click the shortcut and select Pin to Start and Pin to Taskbar.
After clicking these options, I verified that the launch icon appeared on the taskbar.
I also verified that it appeared on the Start menu.
By placing icons on my taskbar and in the Start menu, this made it possible to be automatically logged in to my Horizon desktops and streaming applications. Although it took me a little while to figure out how to do it, it was easy to set up.
About the Author
Tom Fenton has a wealth of hands-on IT experience gained over the past 30 years in a variety of technologies, with the past 20 years focusing on virtualization and storage. He previously worked as a Technical Marketing Manager for ControlUp. He also previously worked at VMware in Staff and Senior level positions. He has also worked as a Senior Validation Engineer with The Taneja Group, where he headed the Validation Service Lab and was instrumental in starting up its vSphere Virtual Volumes practice. He's on X @vDoppler.