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Please contribute – What do we expect from Citrix? – Citrix community enhancement list
Ok, there are a lot of things that I think we all expect Citrix to deliver now in Barcelona when Synergy soon kicks off! But so far I’ve not seen someone that has been combining a community list yet…
And the most important part I feel is that I get more and more information from companies out there that have enhancement requests and issues that they have a hard time expressing and getting into Citrix. The larger enterprises can of course through their channels get more information and also make their voice heard, but the SMB’s have a hard time to do so!
So this is my attempt to start a dialogue with all of U out there on what we expect to see from Citrix in the future! I think it would be interesting to see if the items I’m waiting for a change on is aligned with the rest of the community!
So why don’t we all contribute to a list that we all can share and prioritise over time? I can for a start moderate this list if you comment or send me items that you think should be on the list and then I’ll try to make sure that people within Citrix get the items and I’ll try to follow up! Of course we need help from the CTP’s (just to be clear; I’m not a CTP so don’t get me wrong here) and others as well to put pressure and assist in the governance of this activity.
So this is my first list of items that I think that we can build upon… It’s a first draft and far from the total number of items are there so bear with me! 😉
Please comment below to have your item(s) added to the list and let’s make a change!
| ID | Product/Area | Enhancement request/Issue | Status |
| 1 | Licensing | Ensure that all products supports the license server (NetScaler etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 2 | Monitoring & Reporting | Ensure that you can get historical concurrent user reports that spans across ALL products (NetScaler/AG, XenApp, XenDesktop etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 3 | Monitoring & Reporting | Ensure that Citrix provides an end-2-end monitoring and reporting service for the whole Citrix stack. This to ensure that delivery organizations can deliver reports like “Service Availability in %” over time that includes all service components (NetScaler AGEE VIP, StoreFront/WI, PVS/MSC, XenServer, XenApp/VDA, Profile Server, etc. If Citrix isn’t going to do this; then please point on a product that does the job. | Not fullfilled |
| 4 | Monitoring & Reporting | Provide a monitoring solution to ensure health and best practise configurations of all products involved in a traditional “XenDesktop” stacked service. | Not fullfilled |
| 5 | Cross-product | Improve your testing!! There have been to many issues with updates to products in the “Citrix stack” that has caused issues in others, like update to XenServer that caused PVS issues, or updates to a specific NetScaler feature that caused others to fail. | Not fullfilled |
| 6 | Cross-product | Create an central update service for all products that can inform the admin about updates not applied or if components aren’t in synch in terms of SW versions etc. | Not fullfilled |
| 7 | Cross-product | Ensure that the end-user look & feel are the same across the products used in the stack (NetScaler AGEE login page, Web Interface/StoreFront, Receiver etc..). This should not require admins to do and should be a design principle. | Not fullfilled |
| 8 | Cross-product | Come on, simplify the administration of the products in the stack = reduce the number of consoles! | Not fullfilled |
| 9 | AppController | Multi-domain support | Not fullfilled |
| 10 | AppController | Support for multiple setups that can synch the DB. This to ensure that you can have an HA pair setup for instance in Europé and one in the North Americas and have the end-user be logged in against both and have their subscriptions etc follow them (as well as of course reporting, monitoring etc. etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 11 | AppController | Support for really large AD domains with LARGE # of AD users and AD groups | Not fullfilled |
| 12 | AppController | Support for AD domain structure where the BASE DN is different to where AD users and the AD security groups you want to use for roles | Not fullfilled |
| 13 | EdgeSight | Ensure that EdgeSight or equivalent end-user monitoring and reporting is integrated and that works on both XenApp and XenDesktop VDA’s and that doesn’t increase the IOPS with rediciolous numbers… | Not fullfilled |
| 14 | NetScaler | Create SDX platform to run on all MPX appliances, for more info why see; NetScaler MPX vs. SDX dilemma; https://richardegenas.com/2012/10/03/netscaler-mpx-vs-sdx-dilemma/ | Not fullfilled |
| 15 | NetScaler | Provide out of the box integration with the Single Sign-On product (former CPM) so that Account Self-Service can be made directly from AGEE VIP login page. | Not fullfilled |
| 16 | NetScaler | Add support for AG session policies so that ICA proxy can be turned on for specific published apps and desktops and not per session. This for situations where you might have one app or desktop that sits behind an AGEE and others don’t. | Not fullfilled |
| 17 | NetScaler | The NetScaler/Access Gateway HTML/GUI pages used shall be able to be customized per AGEE/AAA Virtual Server. Today they are global pages so that specific modifications/customizations cannot be made and you have to buy an additional NetScaler unless major customizations are done and then life-cycle management becomes an issue. | Not fullfilled |
| 18 | NetScaler | Change so that you can specify different Authentication policies and requirements mapped to Session policies instead of to a Virtual Server, AAA group etc. This could then provide a way so that you could offer ICA proxy mode with single auth and two-factor if you launch/select to open an SSL VPN tunnel | Not fullfilled |
| 19 | NetScaler | It would be good if you on the Receiver could select what authentication you want to perform upon login and not just at setup of the Account. That would mean that you could pass that info the the NS VS and then in AGEE handle that to the authentcaiton policies and session policies. Then a user that has forgotten a hardtoken could still get access but only in ICA proxy mode and have all virtual channels disabled without having to have multiple accounts in the Receiver and admin doesn’t need multiple NS AGEE VS. | Not fullfilled |
| 20 | Merchandising Server | Ensure that it supports larger AD environments and multi-domain support | Not fullfilled |
| 21 | Merchandising Server | Create a central DB for config etc or ensure that MS is migrated into SF asap. | Not fullfilled |
| 22 | Provisioning Services | Improved/simplified support/update functionality for when you use KMS licensing | Not fullfilled |
| 23 | Provisioning Services | Create REAL update msp or msi files for updates, you can’t require admins to go in and replace DLL-files etc in 2012 | Not fullfilled |
| 24 | Provisioning Services | Implement replication of vDisk files (diff-files) etc so that it’s automated within the PVS solution so that you don’t have to rely on DFS-R etc. | Not fullfilled |
| 25 | ShareFile | Ensure that encryption on local devices are available for all device types and OS’s (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Win XP/7/8, Linux, OS X) | Not fullfilled |
| 26 | ShareFile | Design the product so that you could leverage public storage providers for your storage but encrypt it using your own PKI service and proxy traffic to it through the Storage Center server(s) without having to invest in in-house storage solutions and reduce CAPEX. | Not fullfilled |
| 27 | ShareFile | Design the solution so that you can configure the plygin/Receiver functionality when it comes to StoreFront on groups/roles instead of just for the whole account. | Not fullfilled |
| 28 | Storefront | Support for multiple setups that can synch the DB. This to ensure that you can have an HA pair setup for instance in Europé and one in the North Americas and have the end-user be logged in against both and have their subscriptions etc follow them (as well as of course reporting, monitoring etc. etc.) | Not fullfilled |
| 29 | Storefront | Simplify configuration and branding of the StoreFront for Web sites like most other providers have and they had in Web Interface | Not fullfilled |
| 30 | Storefront | Add all features that where available in Web Interface | Not fullfilled |
| 31 | StoreFront | Design the product to allow the user to select whether he/she can group apps and desktops into folders or tabs in StoreFront for Web | Not fullfilled |
| 32 | Receiver | Ensure that email-enrollment to StoreFront stores can somehow support multidomain support (like if you have multiple users having the same email-address; name@company.com can be linked to different AD domains | Not fullfilled |
| 33 | Receiver | Corporate branding for the Receiver, logo, text etc. | Not fullfilled |
| 34 | Receiver | Ensure that all Receivers have the same look & feel and functionality. Like the secondary and primary password field names should be the same on a Mac and a Windows client, as well as other features. | Not fullfilled |
| 35 | Receiver | Add so that Receiver passes DOMAINNAME to NetScaler/AG VS so that it can be used to determine which AD domain to authenticate with. In todays version you have to either make one VS per domain or cascade through multiple domains on the same VS. And cascading is available as a workaround but triggers failed logins against AD and is not that nice and security/AD teams are not that happy… | Not fullfilled |
| 36 | XenDesktop | Support for Linux VDA’s (Ubuntu for example) | Not fullfilled |
| 37 | XenApp | Support for Linux Terminal Servers (Ubuntu for example) | Not fullfilled |
I’ll post an excel-spreadsheet as well for download soon, and then let’s see if there is an interest or not! 😉
Cheers!
//Richard
Categories: Citrix
Citrix, CTP, Enhancement list, enhancement request, enhancement requests, Merchandising Server, MPX, NetScaler, Provisioning Services, PVS, Receiver, Request, SDX, StoreFront, VDA, VPX, Web Interface, XenApp, XenDesktop
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The IT Melting Pot! 
Awesome consolidated list 🙂 I hope Citrix makes a note of these for their next product launches
Thx! I’ll update the list shortly with some new items that have been requested and then do a follow up on where we are after Summit/Synergy! Cheers!
Like to see Machine Creation Services for XenApp. (now only for xendesktop)
Also i’d like to see Citrix enhance PVS – PXE/TFTP feature, so that we don’t have to Implement PXE/TFTP Loadbalancing to achieve true high availability (service ware)
(Besides that, PXE/TFTP Loadbalancing is not in option in the smaller environements because of the knowledge needed for this)
Would like to see some kind of feature with PVS that would stream a whole vDisk to a local client HD. This in such a way that i.e. the xenapp servers will function without a network connection.
And would like to see some kind of “Offline Database Support” or “Local Host Cache” for XenDesktop. ( XenDesktop availability now depends on the SQL database. i.e. in a deployement within a company with 5 IT admins, recommending SQL clustering is not an option. )
These are the mayor pain points i see in a day to day implementation of these products.