Building this, I have to say I got a little frustrated with Receiver and the work  required to give that optimal user experience, enabling things such as Session Pre-Launch and Single Sign-on (pass through authentication) to give a very nice experience to all users.

Helpful Information
In the process of completing the pre-launch and single sign on, I found some information that I’d like to share.  Some of it was available online, some I worked out for myself.  But, the “little gems” that may be most helpful to you came while working with our engineering team (Of course not everyone has that luxury).

To take away some of the pains I was recently working in our lab, setting up XenDesktop 7.6 and all the latest and greatest! While I myself experienced, note these actions:

1.   Before we start, the following is assumed as installed and configured

  • StoreFront 2.6 is configured for Pass Through Authentication
  • XenDesktpop 7.6 is configured for Pre-launch
  • Session Prelaunch is configured and enabled on XD 7.6
  • You know how to use GPEDIT
  • Know how to use Regedit

2.  Installing Receiver with Single Sign on

CitrixReceiver /includeSSON

  • Do not reboot (We still have lots to do)
  • While Receiver is now installed and enabled for SSO.  (However, this is not all that’s required for pass through to work via Native Receiver)

3.  The next part I have done via local policy however it could be accomplished via RegKeys or GPO’s I just have not spent the time playing in those areas

  • Launch GPEDIT.MSC and add the icaclient.adm this is located in the install location of Receiver “C:\Program Files\Citrix\ICA Client\Configuration”
  • Once add browse via GPEDIT to
  • Computer Configuration
  • Administrative Templates
  • Classic Administrative Templates
  • User Authentication
  • Local Username and Password
    • Enable pass through authentication
    • Allow pass through authentication for all ICA connections

    These settings take away the delay once Receiver is launched, so there should be very little delay between showing “Logon” & “Username” without these its about 3 to 4 Seconds,

    DISCLAIMER

    While these might not be recommended settings they certainly do improve the experience. 

    From a command prompt running as Administrator run the two commands based upon relevant platform x86 or x64, these optimize the authentication when Receiver is launched and communicates back to StoreFront

    32 bit

    REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Citrix\Dazzle /f /v InitialRefreshMinMs /t REG_SZ /d 1

    REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Citrix\Dazzle /f /v InitialRefreshMaxMs /t REG_SZ /d 1

    64 bit

    REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\Dazzle /f /v InitialRefreshMinMs /t REG_SZ /d 1

    REG ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\Dazzle /f /v InitialRefreshMaxMs /t REG_SZ /d 1

    And finally for this part of the setup, you need to specify trusted sites within Internet Explorer to have the URLS of your storefront servers in them; you could do this via GPO so it’s applied for all users or again reg keys.

    Example

    https://storefront.domain.com 

    User Experience (optional)

    To make the experience seamless to a user, I don’t show the progress bars, all apps should launch very quickly seeing as PreLaunch is enabled

    I have done this by renaming, this might not be recommended but again from a demonstration and UX perspective I don’t really need to see these things as a user

    • Program files\Citrix\Receiver\ProgressNotification.dll

    PreLaunch Settings

    To enable PreLaunch you need to enable this, an out of the box install does not enable it

    To enable use regedit and browse to

    HKLM\Software\Citrix\Dazzle

    “EnablePreLaunch” should be set to true

    ClientDriveMapping Registry (CDM)

    Out of the box whilst File Type Associations do work they will not launch from a CDM drive due to a registry key that by default is set to FALSE

    Changing this to true will allow this to work, so you can literally double click a file and your published applications will launch and opening the file you clicked on

    FTA – CDM Registry Settings

    32bit

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE \Citrix\ICA Client\Engine\Configuration\Advanced\Modules\ClientDrive

    “NativeDriveMapping”=”TRUE” 

    64bit 

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\ICA Client\Engine\Configuration\Advanced\Modules\ClientDrive

    “NativeDriveMapping”=”TRUE”

    Now reboot your windows machine, once rebooted you can add your store via Receiver and you should now notice no authentication prompts, receiver authentication is very quick and application launch times are very quick