The majority of organizations using Citrix operate in hybrid deployments. Citrix is built to meet you where you are in your hybrid journey, and that flexibility extends to Citrix Session Recording. Nowadays, Citrix Session Recording supports fully IT-managed deployments and hybrid deployments with the Citrix management plane in Citrix DaaS. To improve user and admin experience, our team has made enhancements to both on-prem and cloud-based Session Recording over the past few months as listed below:
On-premises improvements:
- Graphic processing enhancements
- Enhanced notification for event response actions
- More command options in ICLDB
- Sharing recordings with unrestricted links
- Support Azure SQL database
Cloud improvements:
- Session Recording cloud client evolution
- Activity feed to improve data visibility and visualization
- Subscribe to email notifications
These new features are designed to provide enhancements to user experience, efficient operation capabilities, flexible choices in deployment scenarios, cost saving options, and more.
Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these exciting and powerful enhancements.
Graphic processing enhancements (On-premises)
Compressed recording
Thanks to the latest graphics compressor introduced in HDX, Citrix Session Recording has been able to add it directly into the console to help decrease file sizes. With this integration, Session Recording file size can be reduced significantly for parts of Thinwire-transmitted session screens that are not H.264 compressed. This is great for saving on storage space and managing recordings more effectively.
To enable this feature, go to the “Recording” tab of Session Recording Agent Properties and select the check box in the “Compressed recording” section as shown below. This is also a great example of how Citrix technologies truly work better together.
Image resolution scaling for lossy video codec
Lossy video codec is a new recording engine introduced in the Citrix Session Recording 2212 release, which is useful to reduce recording file size in H.264 mode. This release adds the compression option of image resolution scaling to let you downscale the resolution of recorded screens.
The result is that the viewport of a recording is smaller and so is the corresponding recording file. This is a great solution if you don’t need the same resolution of a recorded session as its origin. The diagrams below show the comparison between original scaling and 0.5 scaling.
Enhanced notification for event response actions (On-premises)
Starting with Session Recording 2206, you can disconnect, log off, or lock users from their virtual sessions when a specific event is detected. This is critical for preventing malicious behavior and cyber threats. Previously, the user could see a notice when this happened, but the message was too general to be understood.
This release enhances the notification feature by giving users a clearer understanding of the reason behind the actions.
More command options in ICLDB (On-premises)
ICA log database (ICLDB) is a database command-line utility used to manipulate the session recording database records. It can be used to perform recording maintenance tasks such as archiving, deleting, importing recordings, etc.
Several enhancements have been introduced to make it more powerful and efficient:
/FILTER Option
The most frequently used commands in this tool are probably ARCHIVE and DELETE. Previously, you could only specify the /RETENTION option when archiving or deleting recordings, but this did not extend to takin action on certain file locations. That’s why have now introduced the /FILTER option which allows you to specify file path or file patterns when doing recording cleanup.
/RELOCATE Option
Another useful command is IMPORT which lets you restore database records from recording files. However, this is very time consuming because it needs to extract the whole file to retrieve the metadata. Obviously, it’s not applicable when you just want to move recording files from one location to another. So, the /RELOCATE option is added to only update the recording file path, which reduce the task lead time significantly.
/RULES Option
In some circumstances, you may want even more granular control when archiving or deleting recordings. For example, you may need to keep recordings generated by specific users, groups, or delivery groups. This is what the new option /RULES can deal with, by allowing you to specify recordings included in or excluded from execution scope. Learn more about the usage via the documentation.
Sharing recordings with unrestricted links (On-premises)
Citrix Session Recording is designed to be a highly secure product, considering the privacy of the user sessions. A user must be authenticated and authorized before he/she can view a recording playback. Normally, the number of users who have the viewer authority is limited.
However, in some circumstances, there may be a need to allow a user without viewer authority to watch a recording playback, e.g., a recording review requires a broader examination rather than just within the authorized viewers. That’s why we introduced the ability to share specific recordings via a link. The capability provides a secure way to share a recording to the domain users with a configurable validation period. After expiration, the recording can no longer be accessed by unauthorized users.
Support Azure SQL database (On-premises)
The database is an important component of Session Recording infrastructure, and the customer demands on database type are diverse. Although we have already supported a variety of databases, the list is still growing.
The most recent supported database is Azure SQL database, by which customers can fully leverage their Azure capabilities when deploying Citrix Session Recording. Learn all the supported database types here.
Session Recording cloud client evolution (Cloud)
Support for scheduling cloud client upgrades
Session Recording cloud client is the key component of Session Recording service. Previously, the Session Recording cloud client was automatically upgraded each time a new release was issued.
Starting with this release, you have the flexibility of controlling the upgrade of the Session Recording cloud client – immediate upgrade, schedule-based automatic upgrade or don’t upgrade. This way, you’re able to choose when to perform the upgrade in your own interest.
Cloud client enhancement
The latest cloud client handles REST API requests and file streaming requests directly, which removes the dependency on the local certificates on Session Recording server. Thus, certificates correlative mistakes can be reduced significantly during the onboarding process. In addition, this enhancement increases playback speed and creates a better playback experience.
Activity feed to improve data visibility and visualization (Cloud)
Previously, we introduced the dashboard to provide administrators the real-time visibility of the underlying system including server status, storage consumption and so on. But it’s impossible to stare at the dashboard all the time.
That’s why we are now offering a more sustainable solution – the Activity Feed. It can record historical system events and alerts so that you can examine it anytime. Additionally, it provides you task status monitoring capabilities such as installation, upgrade, recording archiving and deletion, etc. With this, you have a much better insight of your systems and operations.
Subscribe to email notifications (Cloud)
Notification capability is mandated for production scale deployments. You must be aware as early as possible when something serious happens. Now, notifications are built into Citrix Session Recording service. You can also subscribe to specific events and tasks to receive emails about you resource usage, server status changes and storage maintenance results. For more information, check the documentation.
Getting Started
There are so many exciting and powerful features introduced within Session Recording in the past few months. Look at the documentation for more information and start testing Session Recording yourself. You can now download and upgrade to Citrix Session Recording 2305, or enjoy the always up-to-date cloud service to play around! And as always, we look forward to your feedback.
Disclaimer: The development, release and timing of any features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion and are subject to change without notice or consultation. The information provided is for informational purposes only and is not a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or functionality and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions or incorporated into any contract.
