When using Desktop UI, you should always start with the tool that is added when you installed the Desktop UI. See Help→WinCC OA UI→Desktop UI→Requirement and Installation.
This tool will get a quick connection started for you. Follow the help to add a connection. Once you have successfully tested this connection, it will replace the generic name with the project name. If you right click on that item in the list, you can “Create Desktop Shortcut”. This is a great feature because it takes all of the guesswork out of the icon creation for you.
The issue with this solution is: it is for only the one server you specified in the setup. The issue comes when you have a redundant pair, and even more so when you have redundant networking to that redundant pair.
The config file will have entries for event and data that reflect both the redundant servers and the redundant network. Here is an example:
data = "OAprime1-1,OAprime1-2$OAback2-1,OAback2-2" event = "OAprime1-1,OAprime1-2$OAback2-1,OAback2-2"
See details in help→Special functions→Redundancy→Configuration files for redundancy. The x-1 names are one ethernet port, the x-2 are the other ethernet ports. It is critical that you build your hosts file to reflect this setup. help→Special functions→Redundant network connections→Redundant network connections
Your client hosts file should have the node names and the IP addresses for the servers. There are ways to get around this with IP addresses directly, the examples will cover that. If you use IP addresses, you must setup the config.webclient file to use IP addresses too! NOTE: it is best to use names vs. IP addresses so changes to network topologies won't bite you later.
For the short cut that was created on the client, here is the syntax for our example:
C:\Siemens\Automation\WinCC_OA\DesktopUI\3.15\bin\WCCOAui.exe -iconBar -menuBar -style fusion -server https://OAprime1-1:443 -server https://OAprime1-2:443 -server https://OAback2-1:443 -server https://OAback2-2:443
The UI executable will look for each of those -server locations for a running OA server and attach.
Networking is hard. It either works or it does not… rarely does it “kinda work”.