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Group Policies And Virtual Applications

Wednesday, 07 November 2007 by Michel Roth

Thankfully, most modern applications have their settings stored in the registry. Most of us have developed the best practise to centrally manage these settings using Group Polices. But how does this work in virtual applications?

The question of course is how are group policies applied to virtual applications. Well as it turns out, it depends. Bigtime. Let's compare Softgrid applications and Citrix stream applications. According to Microsoft, Softgrid applications do process settings from a Group Policy at application launch. It's important to distinguish between the "Windows Settings" section in a Group Policy and the "Administrative Templates" section. The "Windows Settings" section does not get applied but the the "Administrative Templates" section does. It's great that the "Administrative Templates" section does get applied because this is where the application settings usually are configured. When applying policies, SoftGrid does not distinguish between HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_USER. If a policy is configured for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, it will be applied to HKEY_CURRENT_USER.

Citrix Streamed Applications however are a different story. Citrix Streamed Applications do not apply any Group Policy. According to Citrix registry settings as a result of a GPO are not applied to the isolation space registry. One option would be to "profile" the application on a workstation that has the production policies applied so the proper registry settings are already in place. This can of course cause some issues when updating applications or having to "profile" an application in a locked down environment. Another option, and this is Citrix' recommendation, is to use the pre-launch feature of Citrix Streamed applications that allows for the execution of a script prior to the actual launch of a Citrix Streamed application. A simple regedit can do the trick then.

So be aware that you need to pay extra attention to application configuration settings in virtual applications if you want to deliver them via Group Policy.