Macro security / VBA error in sequence

Today I had to solve a problem with multiple (Softgrid) sequences with the same symptom.

Situation
A business application generates documents based on Microsoft Word / Excel. These documents use Macro’s / VBA to communicate with the application and retrieve the necessary data.

During initial tests and the sequencing procedures everything works fine and no problems rise. However, in the tests on the terminal servers some “strange” occur when the documents are generated.
These problems result in error messages about macro security and the unavailability of VBA. Even when the macro security is (tempory) lowered these error messages keep on showing.

Cause and solution
The problem is caused by the isolation of softgrid (now AppV). Because VBA is not in the sequence, and not directly called by the application (but through Word), it can’t locate the necessary resources.

The solution is to allow interaction with the local environment. This is done by adding the following lines in the OSD of the sequence:

<SOFTPKG>
    <IMPLEMENTATION>
        <VIRTUALENV>
            <POLICIES>
                <LOCAL_INTERACTION_ALLOWED>TRUE</LOCAL_INTERACTION_ALLOWED>
            </POLICIES>
        </VIRTUALENV>
    </IMPLEMENTATION>
</SOFTPKG>

Be carefull implementing local interaction, this could introduce application conflicts. You are disabling a part of isolation.
You can read more about local interaction at this Technet blog.

PS: Same type of problems occur when hardware is addressed from an application.

Ingmar Verheij