Synchronise the App-V 5 Client with the Publishing Server

When setting up the App-V 5 client, rather than configure it for local testing I wanted to synchronise it with the App-V 5 publishing service.  When we are trying to synchronise the App-V 5 client with the publishing server we can do this (at the most basic level) using a PowerShell one-liner:

Add-AppvPublishingServer -name "<NAMEOFSERVER>" -Url "<URL OF Publishing Service>" | Sync-AppvPublishingServer

When you run this from an elevated PowerShell prompt, you may see one or more of the following errors:

Sync-AppvPublishingServer – Application Virtualization Service failed to complete requested operation.

HttpRequest sendRequest failed.

Getting server publishing data failed.

This is probably because the URL you specified is incorrect.  To find the correct URL, navigate the registry on your App-V 5 publishing server to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\AppV\Server\PublishingService

Grab the value of PUBLISHING_MGT_SERVER.  Replace ‘localhost’ with the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the server itself.  And replace the port with the value in PUBLISHING_WEBSITE_PORT.  Assuming that:

PUBLISHING_MGT_SERVER=http://localhost:8000/

PUBLISHING_WEBSITE_PORT=8001

and the FQDN of the server is appv5.alkane.uk

Your PowerShell one-liner would be:

Add-AppvPublishingServer -name "ALKANEAPPV5" -Url "http://appv5.alkane.uk:8001/" | Sync-AppvPublishingServer

To verify that you can now synchronise the App-V 5 client with the publishing server, if you put the URL into a browser session you should see an XML view of published packages for the authenticated user.