Have you ever wondered what Citrix does to ensure the released versions of XenApp and XenDesktop remain compatible with various third-party software updates from vendors like Microsoft, VMWare, or Adobe?

As you may know, our technology leverages, relies upon, inter-operates with, and supports software; such as Microsoft Windows operating systems, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL, Microsoft .NET Framework, Adobe Flash, and VMware vSphere, to name just a few.

These vendors periodically update their software with new features, bug fixes, and security patches. And for those of you already on Windows 10, you are familiar with the Windows-as-a-Service model and its Semi-Annual Channel (SAC) feature releases. Microsoft’s frequent update cadence paired with the ever-increasing adoption of Windows 10 SACs can make it tough to keep pace.

Within the broader R&D organization, Customer Success Engineering has a team dedicated to validating compatibility with the most relevant third-party vendor software updates as early and as quickly as possible. The team constantly monitors for the availability of updates, validates compatibility, works to resolve issues, and documents the compatibility between XenApp and XenDesktop and these third-party software updates.

Some of the test areas we validate regularly are:

Launch of Apps and Desktops Audio Redirection Client Drive Mapping
Session Reliability Clipboard Session Recording
Time Zone Re-direction HTML5 Receiver USB Redirection
Authentication Flash Redirection RTOP for Skype

Third-party software validation is always done with the latest released versions of XenApp and XenDesktop Current Release (CR) and Long Term Service Release (LTSR). If we find any compatibility issues, depending on the area of its origin, we either fix them in the later versions of XenApp & XenDesktop or work with the third-party vendor to obtain a fix. In some cases, we offer steps to resolve issues with configuration changes.

Microsoft Security Updates: Every month, Microsoft releases security updates for Internet Explorer, Office, .NET and operating systems on “Patch-Tuesday”. Based on the release notes of these updates, a host of tests are run.

Once validated, the details of the Microsoft updates tested, the XenApp and XenDesktop versions tested, and any known issues and resolutions are published as a new support article and referenced on the Citrix Interoperability Validation  page.

Windows 10 SAC: With the Microsoft’s semi-annual cadence, we now get two new versions of Windows 10 every year!  And Citrix delivers them to any place and to any device that you want. To enable this, we run compatibility tests as soon as the Windows Insider Preview builds are available so that you are ready to deploy as soon as the new Windows 10 SAC makes it to the market.

Our teams work with Microsoft and other Citrix R&D groups to resolve issues as quickly as reasonably possible. Known issues are documented on a new support article and referenced in Win10 Compatibility with XenDesktop. 

We also coordinate with the third-party software vendors listed below to validate, resolve and document their compatibility details: