Earlier this month, I published a blog post about the general availability of HDX optimization for Microsoft Teams. It’s an important update for customers looking to host Microsoft Teams in their virtual environments; for customers who are on Current Release (CR); and for those who are looking to move to the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 1912 LTSR.
In that blog, I briefly touched on the differences between how updates would be different for our CR customers and our LTSR customers. Because the LTSR is an immutable release, it won’t receive new features through Cumulative Updates. In other words, whatever “made it” to the LTSR, made it. (We will use CUs for security and bug fixes.)
So, let’s do a little Gedanken exercise.
You are an LTSR customer for both VDA and the Citrix Workspace app. Teams is a mission-critical app in your organization, and your users demand all the new cool stuff in Teams.
What to do here?
Upgrading all your Citrix infrastructure to get new Teams features isn’t possible right now, but you want to make your users happy and productive.
The architecture for the HDX optimization for Microsoft Teams is divided between VDA-side code, Citrix Workspace app-side code, and our </API> in Teams. We built our design to make the VDA a transparent pipe between Teams and Citrix Workspace app.
In other words, for a new feature, we don’t foresee changes in the VDA, and we will strive to avoid them, instead placing all the new code into Citrix Workspace app and </API>.
Having said that, there will be features that require VDA-side changes. The best example is Server Fetch Client Render (if we get enough demand for it). In this mode, an endpoint with no internet access can still fetch the multimedia streams through the VDA, which acts as a proxy.
Citrix Workspace app is the heart of the solution. That’s where the new WebRTC multimedia engine lives and is the one responsible for all the peripheral acquisition, webcam capturing, video and audio rendering, and screensharing. It’s also where new features will likely end up being coded.
The Javascript </API> is the brains of the solution. That’s how Teams interacts with a Citrix environment. Customers don’t need to worry about the API. It’s distributed to Microsoft and consumed by Teams transparently, without any installation requirement.
In some cases, we are even able to introduce new HDX features by making some API changes, so you benefit from a rapid release cycle. By keeping up to date on Teams, you are getting the latest API already.
Your takeaway here? As long as you stay on a CR track for the Citrix Workspace app, you could leave your infrastructure (Controllers and VDAs) on LTSR and likely get new features by upgrading Citrix Workspace app.
Please note, this is not set in stone. There might be features that will require VDA upgrades, too.
In the diagram above, you can see the CR for all the components.
The CR track is the recommended deployment model if Teams is business critical in your organization. This is the only way to guarantee that you’ll always enjoy the amazing new features Microsoft and Citrix release for Teams. However, the LTSR release is still packed with a lot of features that will fit in for most deployments.
On behalf of the engineering teams at Citrix and Microsoft, we hope you enjoy the product and get it rolled out soon. And stay tuned for blog posts on how we’re enhancing our optimization for Teams in 2020!
