At Citrix, we want to give our customers a local-like experience for their virtual applications and desktop opened in a Chromebook. With this new release of Citrix Receiver for Chrome 2.5, we have done just that.
Let’s explore the new offerings:
- Application and desktop icons visible separately in Chrome shelf (taskbar)
Citrix has introduced the capability to display all published apps and desktops as a separate icon in the Google Chrome Shelf, which will help the user to have a local-like experience for the applications and desktop they are working on.
Citrix Receiver for Chrome — Show in Shelf
We can see in the picture above how the published apps appear in the Chrome shelf (taskbar) with a badged icon and when the mouse cursor hovers the application name is visible. To know how to see the apps in the Chrome Shelf, refer the user documentation guide here. Also this feature will be automatically enabled on Google Chrome OS version 61 or above.
- HDX SDK
This enables independent Software vendors to bank on the HDX SDK and open their published applications for any predefined event such as tapping of a card. The SDK allows the apps to launch XenApp and XenDesktop sessions with control and security restrictions. The applications can use below mentioned XenApp/Desktop APIs further.
- Launch
- Show
- Hide
- Disconnect
- Launch the session in embedded mode.
The apps can also receive event details related to connection, disconnect and errors about the receiver sessions.
HDXSDK will decouple authentication from session launch. You can authenticate in your app with StoreFront using SFSDK and then launch session with HDX SDK. This will help in the below mentioned use case:
Healthcare – A medical examiner taps his/her proximity card to a Chromebook, she can view the desired data quickly.
For security reasons only the applications whitelisted in Citrix receiver for Chrome policy can access the sdk to directly embed the storefront and use any authentication mechanism suitable for your app to do authenticate with StoreFront. For e.g. app can have username/password saved or hardcoded.
- Virtual Channel SDK (VCSDK)
Now consider the above mentioned use case in a double hop scenario. (A session inside a session i.e an app inside a receiver launched through a published desktop session). We might want to pass the credentials to the final application. This can be achieved using a VC SDK. This SDK will cater to many user scenarios as mentioned below.
Healthcare — A medical examiner taps her proximity card to a Chromebook, a third party SSO app starts healthcare application, inside a desktop launched through a receiver. Here the credentials are passed through the receiver to the application inside a desktop session using the VC SDK.
This SDK is generic and can be used in different market segments as well to build the custom virtual channels on top of Citrix Receiver for Chrome.
Who will benefit from these SDKs?
- Citrix customers who want to customize their applications and give their users an enhanced Chromebook experience through Citrix receiver for chrome.
- ISVs who want to give local like experience to their customers from their apps running inside a XenApp or XenDesktop session
There are many more use cases that both the SDKs help with. For more information on HDX SDK APIs and examples, visit the download page here, for details on VCSDK examples visit here and for HDX SDK API documentation for Chrome, see Citrix Receiver for Chrome SDK here
Receiver for Chrome 2.5 is released to the Google Chrome Web Store and on the Citrix download page for admins to customize and deploy using Chrome device management.
Also don’t forget to update your Receiver for HTML5 on StoreFront to take advantage of the new graphics optimizations. Receiver for HTML5 2.5 is available here.
Thank you for using Citrix Receiver for Chrome! We welcome your suggestions and feedback in the comments section below.
