This document deals with pre-population of file associations which helps a user to find the application type of any saved file. This feature overcomes the need for a user to install the application in order to identify a file type. This is applicable only for XPF packages and available from 6.1 SP4 or later versions.
Background
A user might have lot of applications provisioned and not all of them streamed to cache. Though we have applications provisioned, the user machine might have saved files that uses the one of the provisioned application in unknown format. Unless we stream applications to cache, we cannot associate the saved files to any application types. This can be overcome by File association feature. In Symantec Workspace Streaming, it has been implemented using pre-population.
Pre-population of File Association (PPFA) pushes the file associations to client machines thereby turning the saved files to reflect their corresponding application icon. The whole application is not pushed, but only its file extensions. A double click on the file, streams down the corresponding application to the streaming agent cache and opens the file.
Let me illustrate PPFA with Office 2007 XPF package as an example. Upload this XPF package to the server.
Set PPFA on server machine:
- Open Symantec Workspace Streaming Console
- Go to available packages screen
- Click on the XPF Office 2007 link which navigates to the Package detail screen
- Enable "File Associations" checkbox and save it.
Note:
When any XPF package is uploaded to server, the XpfToXpa.exe in server machine converts the XPF package to XPA format and during this conversion, it embeds the file extension information in _extensionData BIN file by processing the _extensionData.Xml in the XPF package.
Fig 1: Symantec Streaming Console - Package Detail screen for File associations
Push the File association information to client machine:
- Let us take a Client machine where the SEV agents are installed.
- Save few files of extensions type '.doc', '.mdb','.ppt','.xls' in the client machine. Initially these files will be in unknown format.
- Stream few applications to cache as test user so that the user information will be stored in the registry, which helps in pushing the provision information to client machine.
- Right click on the Appmgrgui icon on system tray
- Click 'Update Applications'. We can now find all those '.doc', '.mdb','.ppt','.xls' files being associated to Office 2007 application without MS Office 2007 application installed in the machine. This is because the file associations of Office application have been pushed to the client machine.
- Double click on any of those saved files which in turn automatically stream the office2007 XPF package to cache and opens the document.
How to override existing file extensions
As a typical example, in any client machine by default we have '.zip' file extensions associated to CompressedFolder types. When we set PPFA for Winrar application and push it to client machine, the .zip files will still be in compressed format because we don't override the default file types.
- In order to associate those files to winrar application format, add the 'FA_OVERRIDE_ALL = true' parameter in client configuration file - 'Appstreamcfg.txt' present in C:\Program Files\Symantec\Workspace Streaming\Agent\Bin
- Restart the streaming agent service. But, FA information once pushed will not be reprocessed again. Hence, we got to remove all file association information from the machine and push it back to the client.
- In order to do that, Go to command prompt
- Execute the command appmgrcmd -res <pkgGUID> of Winrar application. This will remove all shortcuts info from client machine.
- Execute appmgrcmd -cpn to push the file associations again, which will now process the .zip file and associates those files with Winrar application.
Conclusion
PPFA functionality helps an end user in finding out what file extension corresponds to which application without installing the application in the machine. When we get any attachment through email, we can identify the format of the file and trying to open the file will stream that application and opens it instantly.