Citrix Apps and Desktops

You can find a lot of different keyboards for iPads. But you can not find a mouse for iPads. The reason is, that iOS does not support a mouse. And that makes sense since we are talking about a tablet. You are supposed to use your finger to access apps and information on an iPad.

Why do you need a mouse for iPads?

We are in a constant chase for the one device to fix all tasks. An iPad has the right size and the weight is perfect. An iPad is also great to read and access information. Once you want to create a document or a drawing, it really makes difficult without a pointing device. This is because enterprise applications are not developed for touch screens. Citrix created the X1 mouse for iPads to give users the Windows desktop experience on an iPad with the use of Citrix Apps and Desktops. With this solution, you have your powerful laptop and your mobile device in one device.

What about the stylus for the iPad?

Apps for the iPad will be developed so it will be easier to create content. Companies are still using that are installed on a laptop, so we will see a transition from laptop to tablets and the push will come from the users. But for now, this is a great way to give users access to their company tools. Later on, enterprise apps will be developed so we can use these on tablets and touch screens.

How to get the Citrix X1 Mouse for iPads?

You can buy the Citrix X1 Mouse on the Citrix online store. Click here to get to the store.

This guide will show you how to renew RDS grace period on your hosts. Microsoft gives you 120 days grace period on RDS. I would say that it would be enough to run a pilot or a PoC. I would only encourage everyone to purchase licenses for your environment and only use this article as a last option.

To renew RDS grace period, you need to find the following registry key and delete it.

“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\
Terminal Server\RCM\GracePeriod”

Before you can delete the registry key, you need to change ownership. You can do that by following these steps:

1. Right-Click on the key.
2. Click on “Permissions”.
3. Click on “Advanced”.
4. Click on “Owner”.
5. Select “Administrators”.
6. Click on “Apply”

You can now delete the key. Reboot the server and you now have a new grace period.

Ever since Microsoft introduced Office 365, it has been a challenge to deliver Outlook from a terminal server-based solution. The reason is that you get the best user experience when you cache all your emails in an OST-file, which is created locally on the machine. When the user accesses Outlook the next day, he or she might end up on a different server. This means that the OST-file needs to be created once again and that will take a long time and take up a lot of space. The solution is to enable Outlook cache using Citrix Profile Management.

How do I enable Outlook cache?

If you already have Profile Management configured, the change you need to do is very simple. Edit your profile policy and go to this path in the policy editor:

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Citrix Components\Profile Management\Advanced Settings\

Find the policy “Enable search index roaming for Outlook” and set to “Enabled”.

Once that is done, a VHD file is created in each user’s profile storage folder, as shown in in the graphics below. This file will contain an offline copy of the user’s mailbox and search index.

All you need to do now is to reboot your VDAs. Do not forget to check if you have the necessary disk space on your file server that hosts your user profiles.

If you are using Office 365 on your Citrix Apps and Desktop workloads, you have probably run into this error. It says, “This copy of Microsoft Office cannot be used on a computer running terminal services.” I have seen this error even though I have used Office Deployment Tool and created a configuration.xml file for the roll-out.

The Solution to This copy of Microsoft Office cannot be used on a computer running terminal services

The reason why you get this error is that you are missing a key in registry.

Go to this path in registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun
\Configuration

And add the following key:

SharedComputerLicensing: value 1

You need to do this on each VDA or in your image.

Once that is done, you need to set policy as well. For that, you need the latest Administrative Template Files for Microsoft Office. If you do not already have them, you can download here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030.

When the Administrative Template Files are implemented, create a new policy. Navigate to this path in the policy editor.

Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2016 (Machine)\Licensing Settings.

Enable the policy named “Use named computer activation”.

Link the policy to an OU so it will apply to the VDAs. After that, you need to reboot your VDA’s so the policy will apply.