Of the many improvements we brought to the Citrix Cloud platform this year, few got such a warm welcome as the License Usage feature. But almost immediately after the launch you wanted more. When will this feature be available in regions outside the U.S.? How can I release a user license if somebody has left the company? When will this be available for other services than the XenApp and XenDesktop ones? These were by far the top three requests. Well, we are more than delighted to be able to fulfill two of the three top requests today. Read further to find out how!

Earlier this year, the License Usage experience was launched for XenApp and XenDesktop service customers. At the time of this general availability, the dashboard provided various insights for license consumption, but little to no control over license allocation.  Our new License Release feature is our first step in providing XenApp and XenDesktop service admins with more control over their licenses. Customers can now release licenses for users that have left your organization or no longer need access to the XenApp and XenDesktop service because of a change in role. Once released, the licenses will return to the pool of licenses available for assignment.

After meeting with a number of customers, partners and sales representatives to validate the service, this new method provides greater control over license management and a clearer way to plan for license procurement. In contrast to our traditional on-premise licensing release rules, we no longer make assumptions on behalf of our customers.

Key Differentiators from XA/XD Server License Release Rules:

• Licenses are eligible for release (and returned to the pool of available licenses) after 30 days of inactivity — versus the 90 days for on-premise traditional licenses.
• The only way to release a XenApp and XenDesktop service license is through the new wizard within the License Usage User-Interface. There is no other process to release licenses.
• There is no automatic release of licenses after any period of inactivity. The Citrix Cloud Admin must manually initiate the release process.

There are two ways for an admin to release a XenApp and XenDesktop service license: a summary method or a selective method.

The Summary Method

The summary method is the quickest way to release a large set of user licenses that no longer require access to the service. After clicking on the new “Release Users” button, all user licenses that are eligible for release are accumulated into a workflow. The tool optimizes all the users that have not launched a XenApp or XenDesktop session within the last 30 days. This button is only eligible for selection if there are user licenses that are available for release.

Once selected, the admins have the option to search for a specific user, select all users or select a single use before proceeding with release.

The Selective Method

The selective method is more direct: select a specific user within your organization that no longer requires access to the service. Search for the user using the search bar or use the column heads to sort in ascending or descending order to find the sought-after user. Once the user is located, the release process starts by selecting the new ellipsis menu item (highlighted by the red arrow in the image) that has been added to each row within the user license detail portion of the page.

Over time, more options for Admin Control will be added to this ellipsis menu. For now, the option to release the individual user license will only be functional if the user meets the business rule requirements for license releases. Once selected, a similar release workflow will be initiated with only the selected user license highlighted for release.

New ‘Last Login’ Column

The details portion of the page now includes a new column entitled “Last Login”.  Any user login events or reconnect events will trigger updating of this field. This will provide admins an easy way to understand the last active use event associated with the user license.

New Geo Availability

All of the features highlighted in this blog and the ‘License Usage’ experience now are available for both European Union (EU) and Asian Pacific-South (AP-S) customers. Regardless of geo, all XenApp and XenDesktop customers now have access to the experience.

License Usage has been available for a few months, but there has been no way to release licenses. Now, it’s time to go ahead and start cleaning up licenses from employees who have left your organization or changed roles!

Please visit the documentation site to read more about monitoring license usage for cloud services.