Welcome to the latest edition of What’s New with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. As usual, we’ve got some amazing new updates coming for our Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops customers. But most importantly, we have some exciting news for customers who are waiting for updates about our next Long-Term Service Release.
Let’s take a look at the high-level updates for the new Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktop 7 1909, as well as what’s new with the Citrix Virtual App and Desktops service.
Long-Term Service Release News
For those of you on 7.15 LTSR — one of our most popular releases — we have some exciting news about our next LTSR availability. We’re planning our next LTSR for year-end. It’ll feature all the enhancements we’ve released since our last LTSR. For customers who want to test that release in their environments, we encourage you to run the current 1909 release in your pre-production environments. If you have any feedback, make sure to share it with your Citrix sales engineer or account team.
Citrix Performance Analytics Tech Preview
With Citrix Workspace, we want to provide the best user experience possible. One way we can do this is to give admins to ability to monitor how exactly their users are working within their Citrix sessions. Earlier this year at Citrix Synergy, we announced the next phase in enhancing the end-user experience with the introduction of Citrix Performance Analytics.
Like with Citrix Security Analytics, admins can see user-scores. But instead of scores based on security risks, admins can see scores based on user performance. From there, they can proactively diagnose issues with a user’s Citrix sessions and improve their experience and productivity. Customers who want to give Citrix Performance Analytics a try can sign up for our tech preview, which went live recently. Learn more here.
Improved Control to Citrix Cloud Connectors
For our cloud services admins, we’ve added enhancements to our Cloud Connectors that provide enhanced control and visibility into your Citrix infrastructure.
- Timestamp: Citrix admins get notified when a Cloud Connector is being updated and when it is done. There’s also a timestamp added to Citrix Cloud console where admins can see when the last update happened.
- Update Schedule: Citrix admins can now set their preferred time of day for Citrix Cloud Connector updates and manage their resource locations and Cloud Connectors all in the same place! No matter how many connectors you have in your enterprise, you can now schedule your updates to happen at the optimal time in each of your regions.
Learn more about these Citrix Cloud Connector updates.
On-Prem License Server Insights
We want to make sure Citrix admins have all the tools they need to monitor and manage their Citrix infrastructure. Now Citrix admins can monitor their on-prem deployments through the Citrix Cloud console. We’ve introduced License Server Usage Insights, a powerful tool to manage today’s digital workspace. This new feature can help admins:
- Manage solution uptime and reliability: For on-prem deployments, running out of licenses can cause a service outage for end users. Staying on top of license file expirations and overages is essential to keeping your deployment healthy.
- Maintain business compliance: Maintaining compliance requirements and processes is a reality in today’s business world. Organizations need insights and efficient tools to report on what software assets are owned, deployed, and in use. A strong compliance process helps mitigate business risk of audit and license overage fees.
- Mitigate solution cost: Understanding license usage trends helps you forecast future license usage costs and purchases, enabling you to right-size your Citrix offering to best meet your business needs and objectives.
Learn more about this feature in our recent announcement blog post.
Okta IdP for Citrix Workspace Tech Preview
We’re excited to announce a tech preview that enables customer to have identity choice for their Citrix Workspace. We’re live now with the technical preview of Okta for Citrix Workspace. With this feature, admins can connect their Okta account to Citrix Cloud. This lets end users log into Citrix Workspace using the Okta sign-in page through federation. End users will also be able to leverage Okta features/benefits such as MFA integrations and conditional polices.
Interested in this tech preview? Learn more here.
Device Information on the License and Usage Page
Another new usage feature we’re introducing is the ability to now get device information on the License and Usage page. Previously, this page only showed counts of unique user app and desktop launches to provide licensing information. For customers primarily using the offering in a device-listening scenario, the page could potentially show an overuse scenario because device licensing enables various users to connect to a single device and only consume a single license.
Now, with the inclusion of device information, we are counting all the unique users and the unique devices. Both counts are presented, so admins get complete transparency across their Citrix service licensing estate. Assigned devices are now included in both the Historical Trending chart to help admins understand seasonal trends, as well as a new tab with specific information on devices and the users launching against those devices. You can see how this looks in the image below.
The customer’s official licensing count is whichever of the two values (unique users versus unique devices) is less. Using the example above, 36 unique users used the service across nine shared devices, so the Assigned license count at the top of the page is nine. Look out for an upcoming blog post on this feature.
New Site Health Checks with Citrix Scout
Citrix Scout enables IT admins to perform proactive maintenance and diagnostics as well as troubleshoot issues within their Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployments. With the new site health checks in Citrix Scout, admins can now run health checks for Citrix StoreFront and license servers, in addition to their controllers and VDAs. These health checks run a comprehensive list of tests for all major components of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops.
Updates for Customers on SCVMM
Next up, some good news for all customers running their Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environment on top of a System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). With the release of Provisioning Services 1909, we pleased to announce support for SCVMM 2019, which ensures the combined Citrix and Microsoft solution works even better.
Session Recording Enhancements
The Citrix Session Recording team continues to introduce new features that improve security, monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities. With Session Recording 1909, we’ve added new capabilities to role-based access control. In addition to granting or denying access to specific users for reviewing recorded files, admins can now grant viewing access to specific published applications, desktops, or delivery groups.
Additionally, we are introducing a tech preview for a Session Recording web player. This new web player offers an improved admin experience when viewing recorded files and the ability for features to continue to be built into a single, unified console.
On-prem Citrix Gateway as an Identity Provider for Citrix Workspace
There’s exciting news for customers who have made investments with on-prem Citrix Gateway and want to leverage the Citrix Workspace experience. Today, Citrix Gateway supports a wide variety of identity integration, all of which can now be leveraged for authentication to Citrix Workspace. With this new release, admins can enable authentication via:
- RADIUS authentication
- Smart card authentication
- Integrated Windows authentication (passthrough authentication)
- Conditional access policies
To learn more, check out our can check out our overview blog.
Linux VDA Updates
As with every current release, we’re continuing to make improvements to the Linux VDA, bringing it on par with Windows and giving our customers more choice. With the 1909 release, we’re now allowing customers to see Linux protocol information such as EDT and TCP in Citrix Director. Additionally, we’ve made re-authentication enhancements. Linux VDA now follows Windows VDA behavior with authentication. This addresses scenarios such as smart card, Federated Authentication Service (FAS), anonymous login, SSO, and more.
Lastly, we’re excited about the great feedback we’ve already gotten from our recently released Citrix Managed Desktops offering. We wanted to provide a solution designed to be the simplest and fastest way to deliver Windows apps and desktops from Azure to any device. If missed the announcement, you can about it in our Citrix Managed Desktops blog post.
Register for our Overview Webinar Today!
There you have it. Another release is in the books, and it’s packed with features for your digital workspace. If you want to learn more about what will be our next LTSR, as well get an overview of all our recently announced features, sign up now for our What’s New in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops webinar on Sept. 25.
