A couple weeks ago I joined George Kuruvilla (Distinguished Sales Engineer at Citrix) to present where we were with regards to product releases and overall innovation about 75 days into the critical 90-day post-Synergy window. We also highlighted some of the best features we shipped in releases like XenApp 7.18 that didn’t quite make the keynote “cut”. In case you missed it, the webinar recording is available on our Technology in Practice homepage or you can watch the video at the bottom of the page.
The webinar included a live Q&A portion at its conclusion, but George and I ended up with more questions than we could possibly answer in the time we had. There were also some questions we attempted to answer that probably deserved more in-depth answers, so we’ll take another stab at those. We aggregated all the questions here for easy consumption, so without further ado…
Q: Where can I download Citrix Workspace app?
We’ve added a new, dedicated page for Citrix Workspace app on citrix.com/downloads. You’ll notice there are a variety of Tech Previews available right now (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.), so grab the latest and install it today!
Q: I don’t have Citrix Cloud yet – can I use Citrix Workspace app?
Yes! You can think of Workspace app as the evolution of Receiver. So, it will have everything Receiver had, plus a lot more. And the best part is you can simply do an in-place upgrade from Receiver to Workspace app and still use it to access your on-prem apps and desktops from things like StoreFront. Having Citrix Cloud “unlocks” some additional capabilities of Workspace app, such as the new Workspace experience, but you can still use Workspace app to access all your typical on-prem XenApp & XenDesktop resources like you do today with Receiver.
Q: Where can I find more integration on Site Aggregation?
One of my colleagues, Dan Feller, has an awesome article on Site Aggregation that includes a 9-minute walkthrough video. Check it out here:
Q: Is Site Aggregation available yet or still Tech Preview only?
Between the time we did the webinar event and now, it actually DID become Generally Available (GA). Check out this article published just a couple days ago for more info:
Q: Regarding Director’s new capabilities in 7.18, are those features available in all editions?
The ability to break down “Interactive Session” is available in all features or editions. But the new App Probing functionality is a Platinum-only feature. Someone also asked about more resources on App Probing; you can find the documentation here: https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/xenapp-and-xendesktop/current-release/director/app-probing.html
Q: What are the 3 sub-phases of Interactive Session?
Pre-userinit, userinit and shell. I attempted to answer this one live but I also wanted to provide a great resource that goes into a bit more detail on the 3 sub-phases since this article was recently published.
Q: Is the local-like browser that George showed in the live demo just the old Secure Browser Service (i.e. published browser on XenApp)?
No! And we feel like that is one thing that folks easily missed during the live keynote at Synergy. When we launched resources like Salesforce or Workday, those were actually running off a locally embedded browser within Citrix Workspace app. This is brand new and totally different from a published IE browser running off a XenApp server, for example.
Q: Regarding the new Outlook search redirection capability, which policy do you need to enable that?
This is another one I attempted to answer live, but I want to make sure folks are clear on this since it can be a bit confusing. While I mentioned we developed this feature on top of the existing UPM “large file handling” feature, the policy you configure for the Outlook feature is actually not the old large file handling feature if that makes sense. If you grab the new 7.18 ADMX template, you’ll see a brand new policy called “Enable Search Index Roaming for Outlook” under Advanced Settings. And that is the policy you want for this and it will sort of trigger the large file handling stuff behind the scenes and work its magic. And again, all this is really doing is creating 2 VHDX files that can be roamed and persisted — if you look at the system after enabling it, you’ll see an “OutlookOST.vhdx” file and a “OutlookSearchIndex.vhdx” file. And they’ll be mounted as “Citrix_UPM_Disk” volumes under Disk Mgmt if you want to validate there, too.
Q: What communication protocol is used to access the redirected Outlook VHDX files?
We’re just using the native Microsoft communication protocol, so we’ll access the redirected or mounted VHDX files via CIFS or SMB.
Q: Is this Outlook feature the same thing as the O365 User Layer?
No! That is a great question though because the first time I learned about it I almost assumed the same thing. But the O365 User Layer is specific to App Layering. This new Outlook search redirection feature is specific to UPM or Profile Management. And the key difference is UPM can also redirect the search index database — today the App Layering O365 User Layer cannot handle the database (just the OST file). That’s just another reason why I’m loving this new UPM feature (besides the fact that customers have asked me about it for the last 5 or 6 years!)
Thank you very much for attending the webinar (or just for reading this post!) and a special thanks to the folks who stayed on for the Live Q&A. Again, if you missed the webinar and want to check it out really quick, you can watch the video above. We hope you found this information useful and that you’ll consider joining us again next month. Subscribe to the Technology in Practice (TIPs) series here so you can be notified on-demand.
Regards,
Nick
Nick Rintalan, Principal Architect, Citrix Consulting Services (CCS)
