Is it possible to recreate Office 2010 FTAs if publishing only shortcuts in App-V 5 SP2?

Question

Greetings,
I am trying to sequence only shortcuts for locally installed office 2010 to be used in connection groups with combinations of add-ins utilizing user targeting. Package with shortcuts work fine, however when I try to add file type associations (FTAs) the
result is quite poor. Double click on file with registered extension seems to be triggering the shortcut but not with desired result from the office application (excel is started without opening the file being clicked, Outlook is starting instead of opening
the msg file, etc)
Is it possible to publish only shortcuts and achieve full functionality of FTAs as they would normally work in office? What is the best/recommended way to go about it?
I have tried exporting registry keys from HKEY_Classes_Root, HKLM\Software\RegisteredApplications, HK??\Software\Microsoft\[Appname]\Capabilities and few others and import them in the package but wasn't able to get the sequencer to recognize the FTAs and
adding it manually doesn't achieve the desired result
Environment: App-V 5 SP2 with hotfix 5, windows 7 64bit stateless VDI (xendesktop), full app-v infrastructure (no sccm), shared content store
Any help/direction will be appreciated

Answer 1

Thank you for your reply
Your suggestion (office globally, add-in user published in CG) would be one of the options. As with all the others it doesn't appear to be a clean way of doing it as App-V server infrastructure is not supported. That will mean manually creating
(and updating) xml files, using login scripts etc to make it happen. All the others have similar limitation. (This is where I urge MS to re-think their office add-in support and improve it in next version/update.) All that is provided I get buy in for virtualizing
office in the first place. There is quite a reluctance at that (myself included) but that is a different topic.
As for the other people that may be looking to do something similar. It is possible (though not straightforward) to achieve this (using file extensions to open apps inside appv bubble) This may not be the best way to do it but I have found it to work so
I will share it.
file extensions are stored in the registry in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (among other places). Example .xlsx. Underneath that particular key there are subkeys (either openwithprogids or progid/long key itself example: Excel.Sheet.12 - more information on that
bing search for "msdn cc144148" as I am unable to post links at this time). Same ProgIDs/long names are defined again in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (HKCR\Excel.Sheet.12). Under that key there should be shell key with one or more commands (open, edit, etc).
Yet another subkey called command will reveal the executable called for the extension (example: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command). Default property shows clear text command, command property shows the same command possibly with different
encoding (example for excel: xb'BV5!!!!!!!!!MKKSkEXCELFiles>VijqBof(Y8'w!FId1gLQ /dde)
This is the place where I tested adding the appvve:/guid_guid switch and it worked.
Hint: searching registry for particular command (xb'BV5!!!!!!!!!MKKSkEXCELFiles>VijqBof(Y8'w!FId1gLQ) helps revealing all location that need changing per application. In my example there were 61 locations for excel alone. Powershell is really helpful
with that. Search registry script bing search "Searching the Registry with PowerShell Bill Stewart" (another hint: use [regex]::escape(xb'BV5!!!!!!!!!MKKSkEXCELFiles>VijqBof(Y8'w!FId1gLQ))
Since you will probably have more than one combination of add-ins like me you want to use connection groups. If you want to use this option you have to use only one connection group for a particular user for the same file extension. Login script can be used
to set the proper /appvve switch on the fly every time user logs on)
As I mentioned in the beginning it is neither clean nor simple but it is possible. example script code used for proof of concept (all registry locations are listed in office_keys.txt instead of searching to speed up processing. Format is registry location
on a line by itself example: "HKCR:\Excel.Sheet.12\shell\Open\command" . Connection group published to user starts with "office". Change as needed)
New-PSDrive -PSProvider Registry -Name HKCR -Root HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
$officeKeys = Get-Content .\office_keys.txt
$cg = Get-AppvClientConnectionGroup office*
If ($cg) {
$appvve = "$($cg.GroupID)_$($cg.VersionID)"
foreach ($key in $OfficeKeys) {
$command = get-itemproperty $key.ToString() "command"|select -ExpandProperty command
if ($command -notmatch "appvve") { $command = $command + " /appvve:$appvve"}
Set-ItemProperty -Path $key.ToString() -Name Command -type MultiString -Value $command
Regards,
Gantcho Radoslavov