Citrix Apps and Desktops

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.

 

 

 

 

If you add an extension to Google Chrome on Citrix Apps and Desktop, you will probably experience, that this extension will become corrupted once you log off. This article will show you how to fix corrupted extensions in Google Chrome.

Why Do I Get Corrupted Extensions?

The reason why extensions are being corrupted in Google Chrome, is because they are not located in your Roaming profile. They are located in Local. This part of the profile is not being copied back to the profile store unless you configure it in your UPM GPO. The folders you need to mirror is the following:

• AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\First Run
• AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Local State
• AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Bookmarks
• AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Favicons
• AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\History
• AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Preferences
• AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions

Use Google Chrome GPOs

Another way of fixing corrupted extensions, is to use Google Chrome GPOs.

Download ADMX files for Google Chrome

The first thing you need to do is download the ADMX files for Google Chrome. Once you have done that, you need to add them to your GPO store. You can now set up the policies in GPMC.

Create a policy or edit an existing one. The policy you need to set is:

Computer Configuration -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Google -> Google Chrome -> Set user data directory.

Set this value in the policy:

${roaming_app_data}\Google\Chrome\User Data

The policy now creates a folder in your UPM folder for Google Chrome data. Here all settings and extensions will be stored.