Updating your Citrix Cloud Connector is essential to making sure you have the most current connection to Citrix Cloud services. In the past, Cloud Connector updates occurred in the background as soon as they were available. Then, we introduced a preferred time of day to allow you to define when during the day upgrades would be applied. Now we’ve extended that with not one, not two, but three improvements to give you more information and more time to prepare for each update. Let’s take a look at each.

Even More Control for When Connector Updates Are Applied!

We’ve extended the preferred time of day functionality for Connector updates and added the option to specify a preferred day of the week for updates to be applied, as well — and it’s configurable at the resource location level!

No matter how many connectors you have in your enterprise, you can now schedule your updates to happen at the optimal time and day in each of your regions. As a Citrix Cloud admin, not only is having a preferred schedule convenient, it helps your end users, too. Having updates scheduled for when your users aren’t accessing the system helps ensure uninterrupted workflow and that your support team is available at the right time, too.

We’ve also added a waiting period to ensure that we still give you enough time to get prepared. This waiting period will always be at least one week — between eight and 13 days — depending on when the update is available and which day has been configured as the preferred day for updates.

But what if you don’t want to wait? What if updating today is more convenient? As a bonus, we’ve added the ability to manually trigger application of an available update of a specific connector. As always, connectors will update one by one to keep your environment connected.

Please note, changes to the preferred time of day or preferred day of week setting will take effect as of the next update cycle

How Do Admins Know When Updates Are Available?

So, there’s a button. And a waiting period. But how do you know about it? Well, we’ve also added notifications that will trigger throughout the upgrade process. Each customer will receive up to three notifications at various points:

  • When a Connector update has been scheduled to occur: Now you can plan for the updates! If you haven’t configured a preference for when updates can occur within a resource location, we can start the update immediately. But if you have a preference, then we schedule the update to occur in accordance with the waiting period outlined above.
  • When a Connector update has started: Just to highlight when an update is in progress. If you have more than one connector in your resource location — as Citrix recommends — then the updates will occur on connectors one at a time, and you shouldn’t observe any issues. Everything should just update seamlessly.

  • When all Connector updates have been completed: It’s all done! All the Connectors have been updated. Note that these notifications occur at a customer level — so even if you have 20 resource locations, we won’t flood you with notifications.

If, for any reason, the update doesn’t successfully complete, you may receive a notification that an update failed. The resource location interface will highlight which Connector failed. This article may be helpful in resolving the issue.

Admins will receive these notifications through the Notification Center in the Citrix Cloud Platform — but, of course, notifications can also be delivered via an email. Check out the settings in your profile, where you can select which types of notifications will also be sent to your email account.

Great Things Come in Threes

Ever wondered what version of the Citrix Cloud Connector you have? Or wonder if you’re running the latest version? Now this information is only a click away — with both the current and the version being targeted by an update now available in the Connectors page.

Citrix Cloud Connectors have two main pieces that are routinely updated: the Connector and the Connector Components. Each has its own version of software that it runs and are updated either at the same time or independently. With the new versioning feature, you will be able to see the current versions of both the Connector and the Connector Components.

Along with the current version that the Connector and Connector Components are running, users will be able to see what the target version is. When an update is scheduled, the target will show which version the Connector will be running after the update completes.

This additional information will also help you understand how your environment is set up and identify if there are any mismatches between connector versions that might cause undesirable behavior.

But Wait! There’s More!

Connector Appliance for Cloud Services — a black-box Linux-based connector designed for easy management and fully automated and flexible expansion — has been released!

Initially, the Connector Appliance is available to support the on-premises microapps use case for Citrix Workspace with Intelligence. See this blog post and our Connector Appliance documentation for more details. If you’re already using microapps and want to connect to your on-premises systems, just head over to the resource location interface and follow the wizard to add a new Connector Appliance.

If you’ve already got it, then there are still exciting updates on their way. The next one is improved connectivity checking — dynamically making sure all components can access the Citrix Cloud resources they need to keep you connected and up to date.

And, of course, it doesn’t stop there. We expect to add use cases to the Connector Appliance over time. Watch out for technical previews and additional announcements coming soon!

For Citrix Investors

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