Managing published XenDesktop applications with RES ONE Workspace

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Introduction
For a while now RES has supported the management of published applications from Citrix XenApp. This was quite easy to do. Before the release of XenDesktop 7 there wasn’t really a difference between a Data Collector and a Session Host. Both had the same XenApp installation and if was just a matter of configuration as to which role the server had. You would need the RES Workspace Manager Console on one of the XenApp servers and you could simply select Enable Citrix XenApp Application Publishing, define your preferred options and servers and you were good to go.

In XenApp/XenDesktop 7.x this is a bit different. Since the session hosts only contain the Virtual Delivery Agent the requirements are a bit different. You need a machine with the full installation of RES ONE Workspace (Agent + Console) and the Citrix Studio. I will try to define and explain each step from the publishing to the application shortcuts.

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Unattended XenDesktop 7.x Delivery Controller deployment with RES ONE Automation

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Introduction
I am working on the automation of a Citrix XenDesktop 7.9 deployment for a large customer with RES ONE Automation. Since the created modules work pretty good I would like to share them with the rest of the community.

Larger customers, like the one I created these modules for, usually have dedicated database administrators. Normally only they have SQL dbcreator and security admin rights on the SQL environment. This means that you can’t create the database directly from your automation. So you need to create the XenDesktop database scripts and send them to the DBA’s.

I have created building blocks of the modules for which you can download here. I will give a small walkthrough of the automation steps and why I made certain decisions and of course instructions on how to import and use them.

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Saving Internet Explorer cookies with RES ONE Workspace

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Introduction
Since the release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 10, Microsoft has changed the way they handle cookies. In older versions your user profile just had a folder named Cookies that contained them all. When using RES ONE Workspace, you just needed to make sure that the folder was included in the user settings.

Capturing the history was also easy. The only difference was that it was located in the local part of the profile and not the roaming part.

However, when IE 10 was released, everything changed. They started using a webcache database that’s located in the local part of the user profile. It gets locked after logon and simply adding it to the user settings in ROW apparently isn’t enough.

Check the following excellent blogs by Rory de Leur for more information:
http://rorydeleur.nl/2014/10/microsoft-wont-give-me-my-cookies/
http://rorydeleur.nl/2015/03/houston-we-got-cookies-with-ie11/

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Manage RES ONE Workspace database connections with GPO’s

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Introduction

When implementing software, an organization usually wants to go for the DTAP approach (Development, Testing, Acceptance and Production). An application gets developed for the specific organization in the Development environment. The version is then tested in the Testing environment. After that de customer/(key-)users can approve of it in the Acceptance environment and when successful it can be deployed in de Production environment.
This method defines specific steps in the development of a new application or an update of a current one. It also reduces the risk of downtime when developing or testing the new application.

Can you use this approach in combination with RES ONE Workspace?
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Evade single sign-on

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Everyone is familiar with the single sign on (SSO) principle (assumption, yes, I know). You log in to your machine and are authenticated. Now when you log in to a subsequent application (regular or web-based) single sign on functionality (if the application in question supports it) provides the credentials of your desktop session automatically to the application. This ensures a smooth experience for the user and a higher level of productivity.

How is this applicable to IT Store?
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Specific IT Store user synchronization

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While most software is able to directly use accounts from Microsoft Active Directory or another directory service, IT Store is a bit different. It uses its own list of users which in turn can originate from a couple of different sources.
These sources are CSV files, ODBC data source and Microsoft Active Directory. IT Store uses the information from the source and creates the users while using this information. While this is called synchronization in the IT Store, it really has more in common with a database query (but be honest, synchronization sounds way cooler).
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Welcome

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Welcome to my personal blog site.
The main purpose of this site is to share various automation resources and scripts for various End User Computing solutions. Previously it was focussed on Ivanti Identity Director (formerly known as RES ONE Service Store & RES IT Store) related resources. Nowadays I (sadly) don’t work with ID very often so I changed the website’s focus to a personal blog site.

If you would like to add content to this site (in the form of blogposts, building blocks or anything like that) please let me know and I will make you sure you receive the credit for it. Also, feel free to use any of my scripts, change them and publish them as your own.