After some tests with the App-V Publishing Server and the Management Server, I noticed that there is a publlishing interval configured. Means that every change you do in the Management console (i.e. publish a a new App-V package) will take some time until it’s published for the App-V clients. I just published a new App-V package to a client and could see it. So I opened the xml file with the policies. You can open this file on the Ap-V publishing server. Just open the link you have configured during the installation:

http://appvpublishingserver:Port

Of course appvpublishingserver must be replaced by the real name of my App-V Publishing server and Port is the port I have configured during the installation.

As you can see on the screen shot, there is no configuration/package shown in the xml file. After I was waiting several minutes, I have seen that the xml files was updated. I found out that there is a refresh interval that can be set in the web.config file located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Application Virtualization Server\PublishingService\Web.config (depending on your installation path of the publishing server). There is a default refresh of 10 minutes configured (600 seconds). You can change this value accordingly in order to have your changes published earlier and of course also later.

<add key=”metadataRefreshInterval” value=”600″/>

After I have change the value from 600 to 30 seconds, my policy changes were aplied within the next 30 secons which is much more confortable for me, especially in a test environment.

I believe Application Virtualization will be used more and more in future and might be the new standard for all application installations. I will create another post explaining why I think that will be the case.

App-V 5.0 uses the new format .appv for the application packages. Follow these steps to use a App-V 5.0 package on a standalone Client.

1. Install the App-V 5.0 Client on the client system.
2. Copy the App-V package to a share or to a local folder on the Client system
3. Run the following powershell commands in order to publish the App-V package on that client:
   a) Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted
   b) Import-Module AppvClient
   c) Set-AppVClientConfiguration -EnablePackageScripts 1
   d) AppvClientPackage ‘C:\sources\vlc\vlc.appv’ | Publish-AppvClientPackage -Global

Replace “C:\sources\vlc\vlc.appv” with the path to your .appv file.

You then see that the package is created. In addition you see all the properties as on the screen shot:

Note that I have used the Get-AppvClientPackage command to get the properties of the App-V package. You can review the package properties if you know the PackageID and the VersionID.

When you open the installed App-V Client and refresh, you see that there is a new package available. Choose “Download all applications” to download it. As soon as this is done, you can start using it. Have fun!