Invite a User to Join a Remote Desktop Session

When the Session Collaboration feature is enabled for a remote desktop, you can invite other users to join an existing remote desktop session.

By default, you can send Session Collaboration invitations by email, in an instant message (IM), or by copying a link to the clipboard and forwarding the link to users. To use the email invitation method, an email application must be installed. To use the IM invitation method, Skype for Business must be installed and configured. You can invite only users that belong to a domain that the server allows for authentication. You can invite up to five users by default.

A Horizon administrator can disable the email and IM invitation methods, change the maximum number of collaborators, and disable the Session Collaboration feature. For information about how the Session Collaboration feature behaves at your company, contact your system administrator.

The Session Collaboration feature has the following limitations.

■	If you have multiple monitors, only the primary monitor is shown to session collaborators.
■	You must select the VMware Blast display protocol when you create a remote desktop session. The Session Collaboration feature does not support PCoIP or RDP sessions.
■	Anonymous collaboration is not supported. Session collaborators must be identifiable through Horizon-supported authentication mechanisms.
■	Session collaborators must have Horizon Client 4.7 or later for Windows, Mac, or Linux installed, or they must use HTML Access 4.7 or later. If a session collaborator has an unsupported version of Horizon Client, an error message appears when the user clicks a collaboration link.
■	You cannot use the Session Collaboration feature to share Linux remote desktop sessions or published application sessions.

Prerequisites

To invite users to join a remote desktop session, a Horizon administrator must enable the Session Collaboration feature.

Procedure

Connect to a remote desktop for which the session collaboration feature is enabled.

You must use the VMware Blast display protocol.

In the system tray in the remote desktop, click the VMware Horizon Collaboration icon, for example, .

The collaboration icon looks different depending on the Windows operating system version.

When the VMware Horizon Collaboration dialog box opens, enter the user name (for example, testuser or domain\testuser) or the email address of the user that you want to join the remote desktop session.

The first time you enter the user name or email address of a particular user, you must click Look up "user", enter a comma (,), or press the Enter key to validate the user. The session collaboration feature remembers the user the next time you enter the user's user name or email address.

You can invite up to five users by default. A Horizon administrator can change the maximum number of users that you can invite.

Select an invitation method.

The following invitation methods are available by default. A Horizon administrator can disable the email and IM invitation methods.

Option	Action
Email	Copies the collaboration invitation to the clipboard and opens a new email message in the default email application. An email application must be installed to use this invitation method.
IM	Copies the collaboration invitation to the clipboard and opens a new window in Skype for Business. Press Ctrl+V to paste the link into the Skype for Business window. Skype for Business must be installed and configured to use this invitation method.
Copy Link	Copies the collaboration invitation to the clipboard. You must manually open another application, such as Notepad, and press Ctrl+V to paste the invitation.

After you send an invitation, the VMware Horizon Collaboration icon also appears on the desktop and the session collaboration user interface turns into a dashboard that shows the current state of the collaboration session and enables you to take certain actions.

When a session collaborator accepts your invitation and joins the session, the session collaboration feature notifies you and a red dot appears on the VMware Horizon Collaboration icon in the system tray.

What to do next

Manage the collaborative session in the VMware Horizon Collaboration dialog box. See Manage a Collaborative Session.