Here’s a simple, low-tech way to connect to specific workgroups at startup:

Instead of xsibatch -w or xsi -w, you could modify setenv.bat to create another .xsipref file in %XSI_USERHOME%\Data\Preferences. Whatever is in that file will override what is in default.xsipref.

So, for example, you could do this:

echo data_management.workgroup_appl_path	= C:\Users\blairs\MyWorkgroup >  %XSI_USERHOME%\Data\Preferences\workgroups.xsipref

or you could use an environment variable:

echo data_management.workgroup_appl_path	= %MY_XSI_WORKGROUPS%  >  %XSI_USERHOME%\Data\Preferences\workgroups.xsipref

This does require you to edit setenv.bat, which isn’t so useful if you have a lot of seats. In that case, if you use a network deployment, you could deploy a %XSI_BINDIR%\SiteDeploy.bat file and use that to echo out the workgroup preference.