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 a guest VM.

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.
2. On the Select Item Type page, select Folder on the file system and click Next.
3. On the Select Server Type page, select Virtual Guest and click Next.
4. On the Virtual Desktop UNC Folder page, specify the usual application properties.
5. 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).
6. In the Virtual Guest Settings section, specify from where the virtual desktop should be published. First, you need to select an option in the Connect to drop-down list and then specify an additional parameter in the field below it, as explained below:
   • Any guest VM. Use the from Pool drop-down list to specify a pool.
   • Specific Template. Select a template by expanding the template drop-down list.
7. Select the Persistent option to make a guest VM persistent. For more info, see Persistent guest VMs.
8. 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).
9. 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. To view its properties, select it and then click the Virtual Desktop Application tab:

• 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.