Publishing a network folder

You can publish a filesystem folder via UNC path to open in Windows explorer. To minimize the number of configuration steps, a special publishing item is available that allows you to publish a network folder from an RD Session Host.

To publish a network folder:

1. In the RAS Console, select the Publishing category and then click the Add icon below the Published Resources tree (or right-click inside the Published Resources box and click Add in the context menu). This will launch the publishing wizard.

Note: If the wizard has all options disabled, it means that there are no resources (servers) in the Farm from which publishing can be configured.

1. On the Select Item Type wizard page, select Folder on the file system and click Next.

2. On the Select Server Type page, select the server type from which to publish and click Next.

Note: If you want to publish from a pool-based Remote PC, select the Virtual Guest option. The Remote PC option there is for standalone Remote PCs.

Note: Resources published from the local device load faster than resources published from other servers. This is possible because Parallels RAS does not have to connect to the servers via RDP.

1. On the Publish From page, select the server(s) to publish from. Note that if you have just one server or selected Local Device on the previous step, the Publish From page will not appear.

2. On the UNC Folder wizard page, specify the usual application properties.

3. In the UNC path field, enter the UNC path of the folder you wish to publish. Click the [...] button to browse for a folder (it may take some time for the Browse for Folder dialog to open).

4. (VDI only) Select the Persistent option to make a guest VM persistent. For more info, see Persistent guest VMs.

5. (Remote PC only) Click the [...] button in the Remote PC Settings section to select a Remote PC from which the application should be published. In the box that opens, double-click a PC to select it.

6. On the next page, specify the initial status of the resource. Choose from Enabled (end users can launch the resource), Disabled (the resource will not appear in Parallels Client), In maintenance (the resource will appear in Parallels Client but users will not be able to launch it). When a resource is in maintenance and a user tries to launch it, they will see a message. To customize the message, click the Configure button. For more info, see Site defaults (Publishing).

7. Click Finish to publish the folder and close the wizard.

When published, the network folder will appear in the Publishing > Published Resources list, just like any other application. If you select it and then click the Application tab, the application settings will be as follows:

• The Target property will always be set to PublishedExplorer.exe. This binary is created automatically (via agents pushing) and is simply a copy of the standard explorer.exe executable.

• The Parameters property specifies the network folder that we want to publish. The folder path can be in any format that the explorer.exe can handle.

Please note that although you have all standard application property tabs enabled for this publishing item, at least the following items should be ignored, as they are completely irrelevant:

• Publish From

• File Extensions