We recently hosted another Ask the Cloud Experts (ACE) Meetup, a monthly series focused on giving you an additional channel to connect with Citrix experts and get answers to your Citrix Cloud questions. Our most recent meetup, on September 25, focused on Citrix Content Collaboration (formerly ShareFile) for your Citrix Workspace solution, with some tips and tricks to better deploy your environment or get more out of your existing environment.
Join us for our next ACE Meetup on October 30, where we’ll mix up our traditional ACE format and open up the floor for any and all cloud questions. Before opening up for questions, we’ll have a short presentation to keep you up to date on the latest cloud tips and tricks you need to know. Specifically, our presenter, Customer Success Engineer Belair Albahagwi, will cover Citrix Secure Workspace Access and all the cool things you can do with it.
Let’s take a look at questions our attendees asked during the Content Collaboration meetup, along with the corresponding answers. We’ve also made the complete meetup (and past meetups) available on-demand at the bottom of the ACE Meetup registration page.
How can we back up our cloud to a file server to protect our data should we experience an outage?
Citrix recommends using the Citrix Files for Windows/Mac app at a user basis to make important files available offline that would need to be accessed during a network outage. Customers have the option to tailor their own backup solution with custom scripts via the open ShareFile API or they can use third-party tools like SkySync and QNAP Hybrid Backup Sync to create a full backup of data in another location.
What happens if our files are infected with ransomware? Can ShareFile help?
ShareFile has file versioning, and the cloud supports unlimited file versions. If ransomware is uploaded to your account, the infected files can be rolled back to a previous version by placing a request with our award-winning support team. Content Collaboration users through the Citrix Workspace Premium or Citrix Workspace Premium Plus bundles can also leverage Citrix Analytics service to proactively monitor for ransomware using Citrix Analytics’ machine learning.
What if a file was sent to the wrong person or we are concerned that an attachment might be intercepted. How can we ensure that the file is not able to be accessed?
There are several ways to prevent an existing link from being accessed once it is out there. You can access the sent messages in your web app “inbox” — all links you have shared are displayed here and can be expired from here. You can simply delete the file from the folder that it was shared from, and the link will no longer work. If you sent it via the Outlook plugin, you can locate the sent message in your Outlook sent messages and, at the top of the message, you will see a little banner with a button that says revoke access. The link will expire when you click it. Of course, if you enable “require sign in” on the link you are sending you have much less to worry about as it can only be accessed by the intended recipient via web authentication with their ShareFile credentials.
What are the best practices for deploying the Outlook integration with ShareFile?
We recommend setting up SSO into your ShareFile account and then deploying the Citrix Files for Outlook MSI to your end users. You can include Customer Registry Keys that point directly to your Identity Provider which takes a step away from the normal process. Azure AD and ADFS can allow of passthrough or integrated authentication for users on the domain to make it even smoother.
Our ShareFile admin team has noticed the versions of the tools are always changing but not sure what has changed until we install it. Where can we learn more about the releases before we push them out to our end users?
ReleaseNotes.ShareFile.com – This site will give you the latest and greatest updates direct from the Citrix product management team. I recommend subscribing to the page so you can be emailed about all of the updates. The site also acts as a community to ask questions directly to the Citrix product teams.
We have a lot of users that love the Outlook Plug-in…but we want to make sure that everyone is always sending links that require a password. How can we ensure this?
If you go to the admin settings, there is a Configure Plug-in section for the Outlook Plug-in where you can set the default configuration for the account when using this tool. You can “Set as Default” or “Prevent User Changes” on a setting by setting basis. Additionally, there is a setting on the backend that called “Require Log-in on Download” which you can call into Citrix Support and have this enabled. This enforces all links to have a username and password associated with them.
My company already has a S Drive so it looks like the Citrix Files for Windows changed the drive letter when we installed it. How can I decide which drive letter it uses?
There are some ADMX/ADML template for Group Policy in which you can enforce the drive letter as well as a variety of things like auto-checking out files out when they are opened, deleting cache on exit, prefetching metadata to allow for faster load times and have more than just the drive letter if you want to dedicate a drive letter to a team folder or OneDrive for Business or a Network Share Connector.
Should I use the ShareFile User Management Tool or the ShareFile User Management Tool with Policy Based Administration? I can only get one to work.
By default, your account will be set to use the regular User Management Tool (a.k.a. UMT). Personally, I would recommend using the Policy Based Administration version of the tool because it allows you to deploy users AND provision permissions to those users based on their membership of an OU or Security Group in AD. ShareFile currently has three policies available including the Permissions policy, File & Folder Management policy and Storage policy.
Don’t forget to join us next time and get your cloud questions answered for free!
— Charlie Brinson, Sales Engineer
