App-V 5.0 SP2 (beta)–Client UI

If you have installed the App-V 5.0 SP2 beta Client which is available on Connect, the first you notice that there isn’t anything on the start-menu. In the initial release of App-V 5.0 there was both a tray icon and a shortcut directly on the users start-menu (well, if using Windows 7) to view the state of the client, however (unlike the previous 4.X version) there was also no way of getting rid of the system tray icon (and /or official way of not getting the start-menu shortcut, but you can just delete it without any harm).

In a technical community though, the workaround is not far away and after a while someone figured out that by renaming one of the executable files you would simply fail the systam tray icon to start.

Not a pretty way togo?

Well, in App-V 5.0 SP2 (beta) the UI seems to be completely gone. Actually – there isn’t any system tray icon and no start-menu shortcut. Obviously we have been hearing the PowerShell drum for a while – so did they go for the bold move and completely wiped the icon?

I can’t say that the system tray icon is around anymore, however the interface for users can still be found – as a virtual app!

Lets hope this is the start of an awesome trend, but yeah – why not provide the App-V Client user interface as a virtual application?

image

Add-AppvClientPackage -Path .\AppVClientUI.appv | Publish-AppvClientPackage
PackageId            : 237cb45b-20c7-4c91-985c-39a94507975a
VersionId            : f53d7a26-7fe3-40ab-990e-f244dc59ff43
Name                 : Microsoft App-V 5.0 Client UI
Version              : 0.0.0.1
Path                 : C:\Users\\Desktop\AppVClientUI\AppVClientUI.appv
IsPublishedToUser    : True
UserPending          : False
IsPublishedGlobally  : False
GlobalPending        : False
InUse                : False
InUseByCurrentUser   : False
PackageSize          : 1241895
PercentLoaded        : 21
IsLoading            : False
HasAssetIntelligence : False

You can publish it globally or to a specific set of users. Anyway you like it!

Download the RTM-bits from Microsoft.