If an application has a LOT of file extensions, this built-in PPFAM Wizard enables you to quickly find them all, and make them a collection. Couldn’t be simpler !

PolicyPak: Manage all File Associations with the PPFAM Wizard

Hi. This is Jeremy Moskowitz. In previous demonstrations, you saw me map a particular file association to a particular application, and you also saw me do that with entire categories like for Windows 10 playing videos and stuff. I’m actually going to show you a different technique. The idea is you can do what’s called our “Add Policies for Product (wizard).” This is great if you have an application and you don’t even know how many things you need to associate it with.

By way of example, let’s take an application. Let’s continue with VLC. I’m going to talk about both “Simple Mode” and “Combo Mode” in a second. Let’s just start with “Simple Mode” here. Let’s go ahead and click VLC. I’m just going to find the application “VLC.” I actually have both versions of VLC installed. I have the new Windows 10 style universal app and I have the older MSI version.

Let’s start with the older MSI version for a second here. We click “Next.” Wow! Look at all the stuff that “VLC media player” wants to be in charge of, all these things, and that’s fine. If you want to, you can check some or you can “Check All” and it will check all the checkboxes here. We’ll go ahead and click “Next.”

You can call this “VLC media player Policies for MSI Version” or whatever it is. Also, by the way, you can set “Item Level Targeting” right here if you only wanted these things to hit developers or when the machine had some particular “Computer Name” or something like that. You can do that. I’m not going to do that here, but the idea is you’re instantly creating a collection.

When this is over, we’ll just click “Finish” here, you can see we have “VLC media player Policies for MSI Version.” We double click, and there they are. All those file associations that VLC wanted to manage, you can now do that so it makes it super easy. You just get VLC media player on a representative machine like this, use the wizard and create the association, and you’re done. It couldn’t be simpler.

Another example of this might be something like Acrobat. Acrobat is not just for PDFs; it’s for lots of things. So we can click “Simple Mode.” Here’s “Adobe Reader.” On this machine, Acrobat got its hands into all of these little items, all these things. So I’ll go ahead and “Check All” here. I’ll go ahead and click “Next,” and I’ll click “Next” again, and I’ll click “Finish.” There we go, “Adobe Reader Policies,” we’ve got all the items that we need right there for Acrobat.

“Now, what the heck is Combo Mode?” I hear you cry. Combo Mode lets you select multiple applications. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and do that now. I’ll go to “Combo Mode” here, and I’ll go ahead and pick “VLC” again. Now wait a second. I have two versions of VLC. I have the MSI version we saw earlier, and I also have the Windows universal program version here too. What you’re able to do is mix and match between multiple applications.

So on this here I have the universal version, and here I have the MSI version. If you were to “Check All” on both of these, you’re going to have some conflicts. Does that make sense? Only one of them can be the right association.

Let’s go ahead and pick the top five and also “.mp4” because we all know what that one is. I’ll do the same thing here, top five and also “.mp4.” I’m also going to click some things don’t overlap. I’m picking some things that don’t overlap here. So we have some things that do overlap and some things that don’t overlap. Let me go ahead and click “Next” here.

Now the things that don’t overlap don’t matter. If they don’t overlap, there’s not a problem. What you do need to fix is things called “Resolve Conflicts.” Any time you do have a conflict, you have to decide which one is going to win. Maybe you want the “MSI” version of “VLC media player” to win for “.mp4” but you want these other unusual extensions to win for the universal version of “VLC” media player.

That’s it. You just resolved the conflict. Click “Next.” Give it a name. I’ll call this “Ultimate Media Selector” or something. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called. I’ll go ahead and click “Next,” and I’ll click “Finish.” That’s it. We have our “Ultimate Media Selector” here. You can see some of the associations that we selected are going to go toward the Windows universal – that’s the “AppX” things – and some are going to go toward the MSI version that we selected as well.

It’s as simple as that. With that in mind, the “File Associations Manager” wizard, the “Add Policies for Product (wizard),” it’s job is to help you find all the stuff you have across a particular application. It lets you figure out what file associations it has. It lets you build a collection so you can make sure that all those things are associated with that application. It’s as simple as that.

I hope this helps you out. Looking forward to getting you started real soon.

Take care.