How do I run an LV application in the background, yet retain the ability to pull up the front panel?

[ijustlovemath]

I'm trying to run an application I wrote in the background on Windows multiple computers that I own, yet I don't want people who use these computers (friends + parents) to notice or disrupt the application. However, I don't want it to just run transparently (property node); I want to be able to call up the front panel when I need to. A perfect example would be minimizing it to the system tray, with right click options for loading the front panel.

There's an example of it being done here, but it's over four years old, so I don't know if there's a newer, better practice to follow.

[mikeporter · Accepted solution]

Try this:

http://www.notatamelion.com/2015/07/02/a-brief-introduction-to-net-in-labview/

...and the following post.

Mike...

[ijustlovemath]

Small typo: "all the messy the details", a few paragraphs down the first post. I always love to see when you have a relevant post. Thanks for the detailed explanation for a newb!

[mikeporter]

Thanks for the kind words, and you can mark down that one extraneous "the" has been eradicated.

Mike...

[Sam_Sharp]

I read this article - I'm guessing it was more of a learning exercise than anything else but there is already a LabVIEW NotifyIcon wrapper which I have used in a couple of projects and works well. The link is here: https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-10683

[Hooovahh]

Oh there are several APIs for the system tray.  I remember in the 7.x era there weren't really any good options, but today there are several just on LAVA alone.

Personal favorite and licensed BSD

https://lavag.org/topic/14060-put-your-labview-in-the-tray-once-and-for-all/

http://www.ni.com/example/28915/en/

https://lavag.org/topic/11477-create-tray-icon/#entry74996

http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Mouse-Events-at-the-icon-in-systray/m-p/159772#M95141

(not free)

http://www.inventeering.com/products-INVtray_Toolkit_for_LabVIEW.htm