I have been working with a client on a XenApp 6 to 7.11 (Seven Eleven) migration project recently. The client has a large list of shortcuts which were published in their existing Farm and staff were used to accessing content via those shortcuts. This presented a challenge and was potentially going to slow down the migration time until all shortcuts had been published on the new 7.11 site.
My approach to this challenge was to use a combination of powershell and Excel to automatically create the new published content and apps. I did this by extracting a list of published applications on the client's existing XenApp 6.5 Farm and saving the data into and Excel Spreadsheet
The article will describe the the method and Powershell script that I used to automatically publish all of the application shortcuts within the Excel Spreadsheet. This should be used as a guide and I'm sure many of you will be able to tweak and improve the Powershell code or perhaps remove the requirement for Excel.
Method:
Installed Excel on one of my Delivery Controllers
Copied the Exported Application Data and removed unwanted column information so that I was left with (Publication Name, Command Executable, Command path, Working Directory)
From the Delivery Controller, launched Powershell and ran Get-BrokerDeliveryGroup. Noted the UID of the delivery group
Copied the Shortcut.excel spreadsheet into a directory called "Shortcuts"
Modified the powershell script to imclude the path to the excel file and the UID of the delivery group.
POWERSHELL SCRIPT
My approach to this challenge was to use a combination of powershell and Excel to automatically create the new published content and apps. I did this by extracting a list of published applications on the client's existing XenApp 6.5 Farm and saving the data into and Excel Spreadsheet
The article will describe the the method and Powershell script that I used to automatically publish all of the application shortcuts within the Excel Spreadsheet. This should be used as a guide and I'm sure many of you will be able to tweak and improve the Powershell code or perhaps remove the requirement for Excel.
Method:
Installed Excel on one of my Delivery Controllers
Copied the Exported Application Data and removed unwanted column information so that I was left with (Publication Name, Command Executable, Command path, Working Directory)
From the Delivery Controller, launched Powershell and ran Get-BrokerDeliveryGroup. Noted the UID of the delivery group
Copied the Shortcut.excel spreadsheet into a directory called "Shortcuts"
Modified the powershell script to imclude the path to the excel file and the UID of the delivery group.
POWERSHELL SCRIPT
$rowcount=0
$xl = New-Object -COM "Excel.Application"
$xl.Visible = $true
$wb = $xl.Workbooks.Open("C:\shortcuts\shortcuts.xlsx")
$ws = $wb.Sheets.Item(1)
$rowcount = $ws.UsedRange.Rows.Count
$wb.Close()
$xl.Quit()
$xl = New-Object -COM "Excel.Application"
$xl.Visible = $true
$wb = $xl.Workbooks.Open("C:\shortcuts\shortcuts.xlsx")
$ws = $wb.Sheets.Item(1)
$rowcount = $ws.UsedRange.Rows.Count
$wb.Close()
$xl.Quit()
$FilePath = "C:\shortcuts\shortcuts.xlsx"
$SheetName = "Sheet1"
$objExcel = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$objExcel.Visible = $true
$WorkBook = $objExcel.Workbooks.Open($FilePath)
$WorkSheet = $WorkBook.sheets.item($SheetName)
$Row=1
$NAMEVAR=1
$EXEVAR=2
$PATHVAR=3
$WRKDIRVAR=4
while($row -le $rowcount){
$CommandLineEXE=$worksheet.Rows.Item($ROW).Columns.Item($EXEVAR).Text
$CommandLinePATH=$worksheet.Rows.Item($ROW).Columns.Item($PATHVAR).Text
$WORKDIR=$worksheet.Rows.Item($ROW).Columns.Item($WRKDIRVAR).Text
$Name=$worksheet.Rows.Item($Row).Columns.Item($NAMEVAR).Text
$PubNameVAR=$worksheet.Rows.Item($Row).Columns.Item($NAMEVAR).Text
$pspubnameVAR="-PublishedName "+$PubName
$psnameVAR=$NameVAR
$appVAR=New-BrokerApplication -ApplicationType “HostedOnDesktop” -CommandLineArguments $CommandLinePATH -CommandLineExecutable $CommandLineEXE -CpuPriorityLevel "Normal" -DesktopGroup 5 (This it the delivery group UID) -Enabled $True -MaxPerUserInstances 0 -MaxTotalInstances 0 $psname -Priority 0 -SecureCmdLineArgumentsEnabled $True -ShortcutAddedToDesktop $False -ShortcutAddedToStartMenu $False -workingdirectory $workdir -UserFilterEnabled $False -Visible $True -WaitForPrinterCreation $False -Description "Keywords:auto"
Add-BrokerApplication $appVAR -DesktopGroup "NAME OF YOUR DESKTOP DELIVERY GROUP"
$Row+=1
}
$SheetName = "Sheet1"
$objExcel = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$objExcel.Visible = $true
$WorkBook = $objExcel.Workbooks.Open($FilePath)
$WorkSheet = $WorkBook.sheets.item($SheetName)
$Row=1
$NAMEVAR=1
$EXEVAR=2
$PATHVAR=3
$WRKDIRVAR=4
while($row -le $rowcount){
$CommandLineEXE=$worksheet.Rows.Item($ROW).Columns.Item($EXEVAR).Text
$CommandLinePATH=$worksheet.Rows.Item($ROW).Columns.Item($PATHVAR).Text
$WORKDIR=$worksheet.Rows.Item($ROW).Columns.Item($WRKDIRVAR).Text
$Name=$worksheet.Rows.Item($Row).Columns.Item($NAMEVAR).Text
$PubNameVAR=$worksheet.Rows.Item($Row).Columns.Item($NAMEVAR).Text
$pspubnameVAR="-PublishedName "+$PubName
$psnameVAR=$NameVAR
$appVAR=New-BrokerApplication -ApplicationType “HostedOnDesktop” -CommandLineArguments $CommandLinePATH -CommandLineExecutable $CommandLineEXE -CpuPriorityLevel "Normal" -DesktopGroup 5 (This it the delivery group UID) -Enabled $True -MaxPerUserInstances 0 -MaxTotalInstances 0 $psname -Priority 0 -SecureCmdLineArgumentsEnabled $True -ShortcutAddedToDesktop $False -ShortcutAddedToStartMenu $False -workingdirectory $workdir -UserFilterEnabled $False -Visible $True -WaitForPrinterCreation $False -Description "Keywords:auto"
Add-BrokerApplication $appVAR -DesktopGroup "NAME OF YOUR DESKTOP DELIVERY GROUP"
$Row+=1
}
$workbook.close
$objexcel.close
$objexcel.close
EXCEL SPREASHEET COLUMNS
Column A - Exported Publication's Name
Column B - Exported Publication's Command Line
Column C - Exported Publication's Path
Column D - Exported Publication's Working Directory
Save the spreadsheet to the path specified in the script.
Run the script
