I’m excited about our release of XenApp and XenDesktop 7.6. I’m even more excited about Director 7.6. There are a lot of new features and enhancements, all aimed at making your job easier as an administrator.
A bit of history, Director’s original use case was to be the “daily management console” for XenDesktop. Back with XenDesktop 5, Desktop Director (as it was previously called) provided real-time information and the ability to troubleshoot and “act” on VDI issues. We have come a long way!
So what’s new?
- Hosted App Usage – Hosted Application Usage reporting provides the analytics and insights to answer who is using what for how long.
- License monitoring – Be proactive, know before a license issue impacts your business. On the Director dashboard, we include alerts for the license issues that may affect your environment. Alerts such as “operating in supplemental grace period” or “your license is about to expire” are shown.
- XA 6.5 User Details views – Expanded capabilities to troubleshoot user sessions for XA 6.5, XA 7.x, and XD 7.x, all from one tool.
- Hotfix inventory – When troubleshooting issues, it is useful to know what hotfixes are installed on the VDA. In both the Machine Details view and the User Details view, the installed hotfixes are listed. Admins can quickly determine what is installed and when that hotfix took effect. In addition, APIs are available so admins are able to quickly list all VDAs showing the hotfixes installed on each.
- Machines Details view – Many times the administrator needs to troubleshoot a specific machine. The Machine Details view provides detailed information about the machine, resources consumed, hotfixes installed, and what sessions are running on that machine.
- Anonymous session support – In XA 7.6, we have added support for anonymous sessions. With Director, we enabled administrators to be able to troubleshoot these sessions through searching for the endpoint name and presenting the client session details view showing the session information to help quickly resolve issues reported to the Help Desk.
- Improved search – Added the ability to search for machines and endpoints, while improving the overall search capabilities. For customers with a large environment, this will help improve performance during the user, machine, and endpoint search.
- Trends drill down – Many of our customers have asked for the ability to drill down on the detail data from the Trends reports. In Trends reporting, we now show the details needed for administrators to better understand the trend data and the details behind the reports.
- Filters view – Tired of typing in the machine, username? We improved the workflows. Admins are now able to click on the user, machine name, or endpoint name and are shown the related session/machine details. This enables the ability to quickly move from the Filters view to a specific user, machine, or endpoint view, saving time by connecting the workflow.
- Scalable session chooser – Users may be running multiple sessions. We have improved the performance and accuracy of our session chooser to help the level 1 administrators quickly choose the correct session to troubleshoot.
Here is the first of the detailed blogs discussing each of these features. Check back as we continue to add more in the coming weeks.
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive Part 1: License Monitoring
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive Part 2: Support for XenApp 6.5
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive Part 3: Determining installed hotfixes
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive Part 4: Troubleshooting Machines
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive Part 5: Monitoring and Troubleshooting Anonymous User Sessions
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive Part 6: Better Performance, Easier Workflows
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive Part 7: New Trends Reporting Features
Citrix Director 7.6 Deep-Dive: Part 8 Hosted Application Usage Reporting
Learn more about XenDesktop 7.6 and XenApp 7.6
