It’s no secret that Citrix continues to innovate and deliver new capabilities to make your environments more flexible, increase deployment speed, and improve end user experiences. Citrix is also fully committed to meeting organizations where they are in their deployment journeys, and the Citrix Universal subscription is only our first step in this journey.
With the move toward Citrix Universal subscription, we are not only adding features to our Citrix DaaS cloud service, but we are continuing to add features and capabilities to on-premises deployments.
That’s why we are excited to announce the release of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 7 2305! This IT-managed current release delivers new end user enhancements, security capabilities, and much more that we will discuss below.
As we evolve and gain input from our customers, we are building more functionality inside of four major categories. We have broken out our feature updates into each of these groups:
- Operational and IT Efficiency
- Workload and Device Flexibility
- Security and Compliance
- Employee Experience Technology
Our approach goes beyond the traditional cloud and on-prem categorizations, providing a comprehensive overview of the capabilities offered by the Citrix platform. Let’s dive right into these developments!
Improving Operational and IT Efficiency
Save money with Autoscale for on-premises
Citrix Autoscale is now available for IT-managed Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployments!
This addition allows organizations to save on compute costs with optimizations and automation, while retaining a high performance user experience. This capability allows for power management of load-based and schedule-based scaling alongside cost and capacity visualizations. Additionally, Autoscale includes dynamic provisioning to create and delete machines based on admin controls.
Lastly, Autoscale allows for vertical load balancing to fill up machines before powering on new ones. It is important to note that this feature is dependent on Web Studio, which is now available for on-prem term or Citrix Universal license subscribers. Check out more about Autoscale here.
You can now create PVS catalogs from Citrix DaaS Studio Tech Preview
We have introduced a tech preview for PVS to have access to MCS features for on-premises and cloud. Organizations are now able to use MCS provisioning to create VMs for PVS. PVS can now support enterprise MCS features like identity management, on-demand cache disk, and many more. Additionally, admins now can manage PVS provisioning from Studio with unified UI and workflow to streamline tasks.
Simplifying provisioning with MCS enhancements
Citrix is bringing machine creation services (MCS) updates to on-prem hypervisors. Let’s take a closer look at the new features:
- Descriptions for image updates: Manage machine catalogs more efficiently through PowerShell, add and retrieve notes for image descriptions, and maintain image update records and simplify audit processes.
- Support for MAK activation: Provision machine catalogs with VMs activated through Multiple Activation Key, provision both persistent and non-persistent catalogs, utilize Multiple Activation Key (MAK) for VM activation, and preserve activation counts during Windows activation.
- Additional Security identifiers: Easily identify machines with unique identifiers, streamline virtual machine creation process, gain better control over virtual machine configurations.
Introducing VDA Upgrade service
The VDA Upgrade service for cloud-based Citrix workloads is a new capability built to accelerate and simplify VDA lifecycle maintenance.
Admins are now able to quickly push VDA upgrades to persistent machines via Web Studio or PowerShell. They can choose how to upgrade VDAs by selecting individual machines, in batches of up to 50, or entire machine catalogs. Additionally admins are able to schedule upgrades to happen automatically when no active sessions are present. This is a huge time saver, eliminating the manual process of automating VDA upgrades without the need for SCCM or custom scripts. Check out the VDA Upgrade Service blog for more information.
See the new VDA upgrade service in action in the video below:
Implementing Session Launch Diagnostics in Citrix DaaS Monitor Tech Preview
This new tech preview allows admins to understand why and where a session failed for any user. The user who receives the error is given a unique transaction ID and is then able to share it with an admin. Upon searching for this ID in Citrix DaaS Monitor, the admin is shown a complete history of the failed session including which component had failures or warnings with the error-code. The admin can then click to learn more about the error including reasons and remediation steps as prescribed by Citrix product teams. This is a great new feature that allows admins to easily troubleshoot user sessions and give end users a better overall experience.
Reduce costs with VDI Reclamation service Tech Preview
Leveraging unused virtual resources is a huge capability for organizations working to reduce cloud spend. With the tech preview of our VDI reclamation service, Admins are able to auto-tag unused resources to be reclaimed and given to users who need them, instead of those resources sitting idle. Previously, admins created custom scripts to identify and reclaim unused VDIs, now with automated tagging, the need for custom scripts is eliminated as the feature easily identifies inactive machines. Check out more information and configuration guidelines on our Citrix VDI Reclamation service blog.
Delivering Workload and Device Flexibility
New enhancements with Google Cloud
Citrix Cloud now supports using Google Cloud Identity as an identity provider to authenticate subscribers signing in to their workspaces. By using Google Identity with Citrix Cloud, you can provide a unified sign-in experience for accessing Citrix Workspace and Google resources. This currently only supports end-users and support for administrators is coming soon. More information can be found here.
Citrix is also excited to announce that we have a new offering on the Google Cloud Marketplace. We are now offering a Citrix-prepared Virtual Delivery Agent (VDA) Image. It is a pre-built Rocky Linux multi-session desktop image with the latest Citrix VDA installed and ready to use with Citrix DaaS. More information can be found here. This is a great option for organizations using Citrix and Google as you are able to leverage Google Cloud Commit funds to purchase Citrix DaaS licenses.
Lastly, Citrix has new capabilities designed to save time for administrators who use Machine Creation Services (MCS) on Google Cloud. You can now select a Google Cloud instance template as an input for the machine profile. Instance templates are lightweight resources in Google Cloud, therefore are very cost effective. More information can be found here.
Provisioning and Performance enhancements with AWS
As we grow our partnership with AWS, we are continuing to deliver provisioning and performance improvements to ease the admin burden. Over the past few months, we have been rolling out a number of enhancements with Citrix and Amazon Machine Images (AMI). We have added a filter capability for AMI inventories and have accelerated AMI resource loading to speed admin processes. We are also enabling Citrix Studio to display useful property information and applicable choices to admin to avoid failures with Machine profile. For more information on implementing Citrix workloads with AWS, take a look at our product documentation.
Cost Savings and Flexibility on Azure
We are continuously adding more capabilities to Citrix on Azure. This quarter, we added greater flexibility to Citrix and Azure deployments when applying custom properties to existing MCS provisioned machines. We also added the ability for deployments to automatically switch to a lower tier storage type at shutdown to save costs. We have also made it simple to convert to the new machine profile catalogs to ease feature adoption and expand available properties. For all the information on implementing Citrix with Azure, check out our product documentation.
Citrix Support for Nutanix Cloud Clusters on Azure
We are officially supporting Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on Azure for Citrix DaaS and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. The new Citrix plugin for NC2 is designed to ensure seamless migration of Citrix workloads from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. By leveraging Nutanix’s native protection and replication capabilities, admins can also scale their operations effortlessly, save on cloud infrastructure costs, and maintain consistent management procedures. NC2 is available via the Azure marketplace, streamlining operations across multiple clouds without added complexity. Take a look at our latest blog post for more information.
Expanding choice with Linux VDA
The Linux VDA continues to be a great option for developers and test environments, alike. We are continuing to add new capabilities to the Linux VDA, and these past few months have been no different. We added support for FIDO2 authentication in tech preview to deliver more authentication options to admins, We also introduced H.264 lossless compression support for HDX 3D Pro to make the user experience even cleaner. Lastly, we have also added Session Recording to Linux VDA in tech preview to enhance security and ease troubleshooting.
Take a closer look at the Linux VDA:
Citrix Endpoint Management support for Xamarin and Cordova
Citrix Endpoint Management now supports two new iOS MAM SDK frameworks of Xamarin and Cordova! This gives our customers’ developers more choices and greater flexibility as they work to complete migrations from legacy MDX technology to Citrix Endpoint Management MAM SDK technology. Take a look at our latest blog post, Support for Xamarin and Cordova MAM SDK for iOS now in preview, for more information.
Enhancing Security and Compliance
Bringing more to Citrix Session Recording
Citrix Session Recording has been a staple for securing and troubleshooting user sessions. Citrix is committed to delivering the latest capabilities to improve security and admin experience. We are also working to meet organizations where they are, whether that’s in the cloud or on premises. That’s why we have introduced session recording features in both locations. Here are a few of the latest updates that we delivered in the cloud for Session Recording service:
- New activity feeds: Citrix has added a new dashboard to improve admin visibility and improve user experience. These new activity feeds are built into the Session Recording dashboard and will include system event logs, tasks progress, and API history for admins to better visualize the data.
- New Session Recording cloud client daemon: We are introducing a daemon to maintain the running state of the client and to try to fix it automatically when the client runs abnormally. This helps with downtime and eases admin burden.
- Email admins for Session Recording events: Admins now have the option to subscribe to receive an email if specific events occur within the Session Recording console. For example, if the CPU is too high or storage is overloaded, admins can subscribe to get an email to take action on these notifications.
We have also added a number of features to Citrix Session Recording on premises:
- Support for Azure SQL database: We are now adding support for the Azure SQL database to allow more flexibility and choice of recording storage.
- Configure timespan for blocking sensitive information disclosure: When session-pause is detected, we block 1 more second recording prior to the occurrence of the session-pause, so that the block happens before the session-pause to prevent the 0.5s – 1s gap before the recording can be blocked.
- Support for sharing recordings as unrestricted links: We are implementing a mechanism to share the users with temporary playback access links so that they can review recording via the links directly. We can have them share the recording from a temporary link where the creation of the links will be logged and secured with the recording hosted on the Session Recording infrastructure.
Check out our latest blog on Citrix Session Recording for even more updates!
Enhancing Secure Private Access DNS Suffix Support
Our Secure Private Access (SPA) customers often request hostname support when using the Citrix Secure Access (CSA) agent to access file shares. With this feature, the customer can enable the CSA agent to resolve a non-fully qualified domain name (hostname) to a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) by adding the DNS suffix domain for the back-end servers. Organizations can also enable admins to configure applications using IP addresses (IP CIDR/IP range) so that the end users can access the applications using the corresponding FQDN under the DNS suffix domain. The screenshot below showcases the DNS suffix settings inside of SPA. For full configuration information, take a look at our product documentation.
Increasing Secure Private Access visibility with Application Discovery
Sometimes organizations struggle when transitioning from a legacy VPN solution to a zero trust-based solution because the legacy solution has no restrictions, and access to the whole network is allowed. With Citrix Application discovery, admins get visibility into the internal private applications such as web apps and client-server apps (TCP and UDP based apps) in their organization and the users accessing those applications.
Application discovery provides automated discovery and reporting of the various internal applications and IP address/port combinations based on the broad IP subnets and wildcard domains that are part of the internal network. It takes the guesswork out of knowing the specific app domains and IP addresses, simplifies the SPA app configuration process, and speeds up time to value for customers with a simple and easy workflow to define apps and policies. The screenshots below showcase apps discovered by this capability for admins to take action on and secure:
Adding REST APIs to App and Access Policy Configurations Tech Preview
In today’s hybrid deployments, automation of management tasks is incredibly important. Citrix Secure Private Access APIs allow the automation for the creation/updating of Applications and Access Policies.
This gives organizations simplicity. A client API library is a pre-built package of code that provides a simpler and more convenient way to interact with an API. Instead of having to write code to make HTTP requests and handle responses, you can use the library’s pre-built functions and classes to perform common tasks. Additionally, client API libraries often provide an abstraction layer that simplifies the process of interacting with an API by hiding away some of the underlying complexity. It makes it easier to understand how the API works and how to use it. A client API library can handle errors and provide helpful error messages that make it easy to identify and fix issues. Lastly, a client API library can handle the retries and caching of the requests, reducing the number of calls to the server and thus improving the performance.
With application configuration, admins can create a new app, edit existing app, delete any app, get a list of all apps, fetch list of all configured apps, and fetch complete app config details for any app.
Adding more to Citrix Analytics for Security
With the current Tech Preview for “Username Masking” in mind, we are now equipping our customers with more flexibility when it comes to role based access control (RBAC), as we are adding the “Privacy Administrator” role in addition to the existing “Full Administrator” and “Read Only Administrator” roles.
Flexibility should go hand in hand with simplicity, why we at the same time added a new integration for Azure Active Directory users and groups.
Streamlining Employee Experience Technology
New Citrix Workspace user interface Tech Preview
We are excited to announce that we are revamping the cloud-based Workspace user interface (UI) into a streamlined user portal to declutter app and desktop options. We have refocused the UI to deliver users their apps and desktops seamlessly with categories, favoriting, a new home tab, and improved first-time use. These features truly improve the utility and usability of Citrix resources. We also introduced Citrix Activity Manager, which is a long awaited capability that allows users to restart sessions on their own, without burdening helpdesk staff. This is a huge win for advanced users, and a time saver for your IT teams. Now in Tech Preview, the new cloud-based UI can be used inside of your test environments today. Take a closer look at this blog for more information.
Also, here is a sneak peek of the new user interface:
Adding EDT Lossy in Citrix Gateway service
Loss tolerant mode is particularly useful for remote workers who rely on real-time multimedia for their work. For unified communications, training, and many other multimedia activities, it is critical that the audio remains in sync to ensure that remote employees receive the same experience as those who are physically present. EDT Lossy can help maintain this synchronization even on networks with high latency and packet loss. It is also the preferred mode for audio, ensuring superior audio quality compared to EDT during lossy network conditions.
During normal conditions, both EDT and EDT Lossy provide similar results. However, during network conditions with packet loss, EDT Lossy provides a better audio experience compared to EDT. This makes it an essential feature for remote workers who rely on real-time multimedia for their work. Take a closer look at this feature in the blog.
Stay in sync with Simulcast for Microsoft Teams
A huge enhancement for users that leverage virtualized Microsoft Teams is the Citrix support for Microsoft Teams Simulcast. This capability prevents the lowest-performing endpoint from dictating the video resolution for all meeting attendees. This is especially useful with under-spec client devices or low-bandwidth situations. As an example, if one client has a large all-hands meeting with one speaker and >150 participants. Invariably one or more of those participants’ devices could only handle a low video resolution and thus the entire call and all participants saw the lower-quality video when the majority were capable of receiving HD quality video. With Simulcast, all video streams are delivered at the best quality for each individual endpoint.
For more information on the latest HDX updates with Microsoft teams, check out this blog.
Improving tracking and performance with geolocation redirection
For users who leverage devices out in the field, on job sites, and more, having accurate locating information of the endpoint is vital. With the geolocation redirection feature, Citrix is now offering a native experience for virtualized applications that need user location data. This feature allows the user’s endpoint device to pass its location information to the application. This is great for organizations to virtualize their mapping, logistics, fleet applications, and more!
Enhancing Citrix Workspace customization with the Custom Domain Tech Preview
We just announced that we have now made available the Pubic Tech Preview of Custom Domain (aka Vanity URL) for the Citrix Workspace Platform. This feature enables customers to personalize their end user facing workspace URL to their own domain in addition to the cloud.com URL which Citrix provides. Organizations now have the choice to leverage a company-branded domain name that is unique and easy to remember for employees accessing their Citrix resources. This is a huge step forward in giving organizations more flexibility for their users’ deployments, and users are able to access their needed resources through an easy to remember URL. Check out our product documentation for more information.
Adding Data Availability to Citrix Analytics for Performance
The clear benefit of using Citrix to analyze and optimize Citrix data is that there is no need to deploy any agents. Yes, no extra agents! All the “agents” needed are potentially already in place. Potentially, because minimum versions have to be met, onboarding of the components has to happen, and communication to Citrix Cloud needs to be permitted, so that the metrics and metadata will be delivered to Citrix Analytics.
To raise awareness of what is causing “N/A” items and missing insights, we have added in-product notifications, information symbols, and pop-ups. The Analytics dashboard was equipped with a new “Check data availability”-button, as shown in the screenshots below, which will summarize sessions with incomplete data.
New Mode categories in Citrix Analytics for Performance
Citrix Analytics is designed to support you with fast responses when it comes to triaging problems. If you are looking to plan and scale, higher precision based on large data sets will likely be more important than speed. With the latest release, we are providing you the option to temporarily change the data sampling mode for the Analytics Dashboard with the click of a button to allow for higher precision data to be gathered. This option, as shown in the screenshot below, becomes available in tenants with more than 25k unique users in the past 30 days.
Splunk Integration with Citrix Analytics for Performance
Citrix Analytics for Performance is all about data. We are continuing to stick to that theme and have introduced the enhancement of the existing data export capabilities. Citrix Analytics for Performance is now also offering the Bulk Data Export option to export and share the collected metrics and events with Splunk as shown below.
The Citrix Analytics add-on for Splunk enables Splunk Enterprise administrators to view performance data collected, such as Session or Machine Details from Citrix Analytics for Performance. You can also correlate the data collected from Citrix Analytics for Performance with data from other data sources configured on your Splunk. This correlation provides you visibility into performance from multiple sources, helps to shorten time to resolution or take actions to improve the usage and performance of your Citrix environment.
Learn More
As you can see, Citrix is committed to delivering updates that improve operational and IT efficiency, deliver workload and device flexibility, enable security and compliance, and streamline the employee experience. And this is just the beginning!
Citrix is committed to meeting you where you are on your journey and give you real-time insights into what we are developing. To get the latest information on Citrix features, take a look at our Citrix Updates page to see granular details about all new and upcoming capabilities. You can also get the latest on-premises updates from our product documentation. Keep an eye out for more exciting news and updates to come!
