With ZENworks, the client workstation runs the Novell Application Launcher (NAL) program or NAL Explorer. NAL searches the eDirectory tree for applications the user is authorized to use, and NAL Explorer places application icons on a user's Windows Explorer start menu.
Depending on your eDirectory tree design and where you put your application objects, your ZENworks for Desktops clients might be talking to more servers than necessary when searching for application icons, including eDirectory servers over the WAN. That extra chatter means slower performance.
The process works like this. NAL finds the user policies in eDirectory. So if the user object is Drews.Staff.ENGR, NAL reads its policy. Then it goes up the organizational tree and checks the Staff.ENGR organizational-unit object and, finally, the ENGR organization object.
All this tree-climbing is inefficient, so make sure NAL reads the data only off the Staff.ENGR organizational unit object. Configure the organizational unit objects' setting on ZENworks for Desktops' Application Launcher tab to "top of configuration tree." That way, the application launcher won't search the tree at higher levels for configuration information, which improves its performance.
You can further optimize performance by selecting the "set application inheritance level" setting. This determines how far up the directory tree to search for application associations. The downside is that the NAL client can miss some application privileges if it is set too low.
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