Release of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1903 (formerly XenApp)

Yesterday Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 1903 (formerly XenApp) was released.

Download: https://www.citrix.com/downloads/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops/product-software/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops-1903.html
What’s new: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/whats-new.html

Examples of new features:

  • Citrix Director – Citrix Profile Management Duration in Profile Load
  • MCS storage optimization
  • Framehawk is now unsupported
  • DPI matching on Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019
  • Copy and paste between sessions and clients

Download and install latest Tablacus Explorer

In all of my current EUC deployments, I install Tablacus Explorer as an alternative to explorer.exe for use as a published application. This is an evergreen PowerShell script, that downloads and installs the latest version.

In one of my past articles I presented Tablacus Explorer as an replacement for explorer.exe in Citrix Virtual Apps und Desktops (formerly XenApp) as a published application. With automation more and more being mandatory in IT projects, I needed a way to install Tablacus Explorer evergreen with PowerShell each and every time I deploy it to Windows Clients, RDSH, Citrix virtual apps or desktops or in MDT Task sequences. Once again I used one of Trond Eric Haavarstein example scripts and altered it to fit my needs. Here are the results. Continue reading “Download and install latest Tablacus Explorer”

HowTo: Publish the classic Printers folder in Citrix virtual Apps and Desktops

Starting with Windows Server 2012 R2 Citrix Administrators have to face the problem, that the new Device And Printers view doesn’t work as expected. Connected network printers are invisible. To face that issue, it is a valid workaround to publish the classic Printers Folder.

Starting with Windows Server 2012 R2 Citrix Administrators have to face the problem, that the new Device And Printers view doesn’t work as expected. Connected network printers are often not visible, or to bring it on point: Invisible to the end user. There are several sources on the internet, that describe this pain, for example:

To face that issue, it is a valid workaround to publish the classic Printers Folder known from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, to your end users. In this view, the problem with the invisible printers doesn’t exit. Additionally we give the users the possibility to get access to the session network printer mapping and the default printer settings.

Continue reading “HowTo: Publish the classic Printers folder in Citrix virtual Apps and Desktops”

My first time: Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS)

After years of MCS virginity I decided it’s finally time to ditch the little farms and try out good ol’ Citrix Machine Creation Services.

Introduction

So today is my very first time: After years of MCS virginity I decided it’s finally time to ditch the little farms and try out good ol’ Citrix Machine Creation Services. In the last ten years I almost exclusively installed small deployments. The big ones have about 150 concurrent user. All are build upon XenApp 6.5 or XenApp 7.6+ with static persistent virtual machines. I always told myself, that static persistent virtual machines, together with a fully automated patch management (for example: PDQ) are enough. And this is still true, because the maintenance effort is virtually not existent. But it really bugs me, that I’m not equally familiar with at least one of the provisioning methods. You might ask, why I don’t try to learn PVS instead. Well, the simple reason is that my stomach tells me not to. The more valid reason is that MCS is included in every XenApp license and doesn’t require additional infrastructure. And additional infrastructure is always a really big topic for the customer.

This blog post won’t be a real classical Blog HowTo Guide, but more of a report of my journey to help me keep track about what I do. Maybe others suffer the same knowledge gap and are interested in my findings and the path I take. Continue reading “My first time: Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS)”

Group Policy: Show only specified Control Panel items for Outlook 2016 via Office 365

Quick Tip Blog article: HowTo whitelist the Outlook 2016/Office 365 control panel item correctly.

I just stumbled over something at a customers environment. We had a Outlook 2016 / Office 365 problem in a XenApp session. We tried to access the Outlook control panel item, but it was missing. This was no surprise, as we have the GPO…

Show only specified Control Panel items

…enabled in every environment. This acts as a whitelisting for the control panel items, so the user only has access to those items, that matter to him. Continue reading “Group Policy: Show only specified Control Panel items for Outlook 2016 via Office 365”