World of EUC

I believe so yes:

<https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-for-vdi>

But the insaller according to James Rankin doesn't appear different.

Don't think that's a new installer version

Updated citrix link:
<https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/multimedia/opt-ms-teams.html|https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/multimedia/opt-ms-teams.html>

<https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/multimedia/opt-ms-teams.html>

Oh wow, I'm on a compatible version &lt;opens Cloud Studio | Policies&gt;

The mentioned regkey is present in my lab :grin:

There was a question on the IGEL slack workspace about IGEL support, as effectively it is an RTOP/BCR-type topology i believe, and they say they are waiting for Citrix and will release firmware at a 'later date'.  So i'm guessing with IGEL we still have to wait for voice/video optimisation.

image.png

The banner that says Optimized for Citrix

good to know.  I haven't even started labbing it yet

Strange… with Win 10 WorkspaceApp 1911 the regkey HKCU\Software\Citrix\HDXMediaStream\MSTeamsRedirSupport is set to ‘1’, so it seems to work, but I can’t recognize it in the Teams App
Testing on Win 2019 VDA 1909, Is it true that Teams isn’t official supported on Windows Server 2016/2019?

i freaking hope not.  I was planning on running this in my 2019 environment

The latest version was supposed to be. From how i understand it. If they did that, then thats not good.

The Microsoft article says applications on a centralized server

Let us know how the calling part work out for u.

I am offloading Teams but running it through our proxy, using the Citrix policy setting.....works fine most of the time but when joining a meeting it fails. Might be an auth fault on our side but something worth looking at....I have to disable the offloading and restart Teams to get around it

How did you get the banner saying it’s optimized? I have the reg key but still not the banner. <@UMB4XQE79> 

Yeah mine not saying optimised either, but I can see the offload process running

ok, might be the newer build then, Citrix mentions 1.2.00.31357 but I‘m on a newer one already 

Good write up
<https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2019/12/12/hdx-optimization-for-microsoft-teams-now-generally-available/|https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2019/12/12/hdx-optimization-for-microsoft-teams-now-generally-available/>

My XDC is still on 1903.. I dn't think this matters?  Can I just manually set *HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Citrix\HDXMediaStream\MSTeamsRedirSupport to 1* 

Well, never mind, it just showed up anyway, without me setting anything.  VDA is 1909...

„Optimized for Citrix“ showed up after connecting local Audio/Video device

If you have Teams in ctxhook from previous crashes, I would assume this needs removed?

Ok, so that works pretty damn good.  Just got off a video call with a colleague.  It works awesome.

HDXTeams.exe only took up like 25% CPU for a small bit.. hovered around 7-15%

have you looked at the ListOfDDCs registry value?

I have a gpo to update them in different sites

Look half way down
<https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/manage-deployment/vda-registration.html|https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/manage-deployment/vda-registration.html>

Thanks I will cehck that out - just updating an image as we speak .  I have that GPO as well - maybe I should make sure to clear the key before sealing the image......

Although the imaging vm is in an ou that does not receive the gpo......

You can do it in the image or GPO. Totally your choice bud

So I will be a bit slow on updating on this, power outage at customer site.....

but thanks for the tips, I am surely on the right track

One thing I've done in situations like that is to have a start up script look for the computer OU that defines the site it's in and then set the reg key.  Set the desktop service to manual and then the startup script starts the service once the registry is set

Nice - cleaner than the way I've done it .......

Do you see anything in the event logs? Is the image trying to register with the wrong controllers?  Ive had to clear out other registry keys besides listofddcs to get the vm to register to the correct site.

I dont know if these still exist in CU5 but had to modify these in previous versions. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\ListOfDDCs
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\ListOfDDCs
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Policies\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\ListOfDDCs
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\State] “RegisteredDdcFqdn”
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\Policy] “ListOfDDCs”
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\PreviousState] “PreviousRegisteredDdcFqdn”

no the event logs dont seem to show that it even tried to do it.  I checked the client and all 4 ddc's.....it has been a bit weird tbh --- I am sidetracked at the moment bringing services back up now that power is restored, I will tackle this again Monday.....

oh - you continued while I was typing - thank you!

Heres some other locations i noticed that store ddcs info C:\ProgramData\Citrix\PVSAgent\LocallyPersistedData\BrokerAgentInfo\SavedListOfDdcsSids.xml
 C:\ProgramData\Citrix\PVSAgent\LocallyPersistedData\BrokerAgentInfo\GroupPolicyValues.xml
And VDAState.ini

If i read this right, your most likely not getting the new values before the service starts from GPO.  make sure the service is set to delayed start.  It might be all you need.

<@UKHUMQ2H2> is right. Or better use BIS-F and configure the VDA to “Delay Citrix Desktop Service”

You should be able to do that using the Citrix Workspace App

Is there a name for what I am trying to do?  It's not quite double hop.

Well..I call it "Citrix within Citrix" :slightly_smiling_face:

Log in to something delivered via CVAD and then open something else delivered via CVAD

it is double hop, and if I remeber my studying correctly you need to /enableSSO while installing workspace app or receiver and set the storefront url in the delivery group thing

let me quick check the last one I thought it was in studio under delivery group

Also remember to add the StoreFront URL to the Local Intranet Zone in Internet Options, otherwise your pass through authentication will not work

Kasper, pass through auth seems to be working fine.

Chris, is this what you were referring to?

but thats exactly what your trying to do right ?

OK!  I knew it was something simple - I guess I just define the storefront URL here, and off to testing land!

With IT troubleshooting it is either DNS, or a checkbox.  Mostly DNS :slightly_smiling_face:

Good luck convincing network guys that it is the network!

That explains why I am going grey already!

did that work?  We are doing something similar, but either have a GPO that sets the storefront location or just put the registry entry in for storefront.

e.g. <http://bbc.co.uk> redirects to <http://bbc.com> for US-users but stays at <http://bbc.co.uk> when browsing from the UK.

Is there GSLB type DNS responses going on here?

Only with a proxy that I know of Carl. We have the same issue in the UK with some US sites.

UK Proxy or BCR and break out the traffic locally on your UK endpoints for those websites

Good shout <@UL5TD2QM9>. Or put VDAs in the UK, I guess that's not an option though.

A danish customer of mine, with US based users, have set up a proxy in the US to be able to provide US content, before the proxy they all had danish based content.

This exam gets more ADC focused with each iteration

Thank you, just had a cancellation on the 23rd and had a difficult time finding another customer that wasn't closed/on holidays then :slightly_smiling_face: , this seems like a good alternative.

No Test Center in my area is offering this exam :(

yeah I had the same, had to book in another country, looks like they excluded some countries.

Nothing here either.  Wonder if it is US only?

I double dog dare someone to upgrade prod before Christmas break!

I'm going to upgrade my Prod Home Lab. Does it count? :smile:

But some features of the early access are missing :joy:

IMG_20191218_120104.jpg

I don’t find the Multi-Session write-back thing for FSLogix Profile Container in docs...skipped or available in 1912?

Unless I'm missing something, a good amount of documentation does not exist yet. Trying to find all of the requirements (like XS and licensing), but only see old documentation there.

Safe to assume that the 1909 CR requirements will be the same?

Lol I miss the same. I must kill the part out of my blog

Shit, which means we also need a XS update to support this.

Im really curious about the user layer with fslogix.

It's the same technology as App Layering User Layers, so I imagine it works fine. Others are using that combo currently.

Yeah, it's built into the VDA installer now

I write a little how to for the Activation of User layer. <http://deyda.net/index.php/en/2019/12/18/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops-7-1912-ltsr-is-out-now/|http://deyda.net/index.php/en/2019/12/18/citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops-7-1912-ltsr-is-out-now/>

<@UR9T47CRM> i talking about fslogix and the user layering piece. I dont see any point in using both. Your adding more mount points. Maybe im over thinking it. But thank you for the guide.

I could see rolling with FSLogix for O365 and User Layers for everything else, as UL captures more than just your profile.

Yea i see what u saying. UL would capture custom app installs, but keep the machine clean because its non presistent. Then fslogix would handle the profile sode as well as office container..

I have alot of work ahead. Need to update my lab, test the new teams citrix Verison, test the hotfix for FSlogix, then layout my ca build. Then test test test. Then bring my half ltsr and half CR up to 1912. Not enough time in one day. Not to mention, providing all citrix guidance for less experienced people.

If we're already setup using App Layering w/ UL i would imagine i could ignore that part of the VDA install since we handle it w/ our ELM  images

Yea, its a perk for PVD that was taken out. Its only for people use would like a persistent session on a non persistent image. I am really eager to use it. We dont have App Layering. But side question, what is ur average login time with Applayerng?

we've actually been using app layering way back in the day when it was unidesk (all the way back to v1.6) so i dont know a citrix setup w/out the tech.   login time is something i'm working on actually....so mcs non persistent/full user layer we're averaging about 60 -70 seconds but noticed thats when we login w/ linux thin clients w/ 2 monitors. if i test same user w/ an HTML5 connection its in the 25-30 sec range so no clue what to do w/ that

User layer in general is pretty bad ass though.  you learn the little quarks of it over time but the benefits far outweigh the negatives in my opinion

<https://carlwebster.com/group-policy-default-settings-for-citrix-virtual-apps-and-desktops-that-changed-between-1909-and-1912/>

<https://carlwebster.com/citrix-xenapp-xendesktop-7-x-documentation-script-update-version-1-44/>

<https://carlwebster.com/new-script-get-serviceaccounts-v1-00/>

Carl, states its still in use sir.
<https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/system-requirements.html|https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/system-requirements.html>

7 was dropped when they went to new naming scheme 

Yea. That’s what I though but their announcements and docs still say both. Lol. 

The 7 is still there in the official name.  We gave them all kinds of feedback on how it was going to be confusing, but they went ahead with it anyway.

I still call it XenDesktop, so the naming doesn't matter at all to me.

But that wouldn’t matter really because 1912 will never be used again regardless of 7 or 8.

<https://carlwebster.com/citrix-xenapp-xendesktop-7-8-documentation-script-update-version-2-30/>

I upgraded to CWA 1909, but that didn't change the behavior. If I manually select Connect automatically, the webcam appears... upside freakin' down.

I assume its using the webcam video compression aka optimized?

Unfortunately web cams i have never used in Citrix. Either strange usb devices, or audio devices. I hope u do figure it out.

Maybe this will help u. Or help put u in a path.
<https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX132764|https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX132764>

Yeah, these are optimized webcams, no USB redirection. If they have to manually change this setting on their own once, so be it, but this can’t be the expected behavior.

Now, the upside down thing, that could be bad. I tried the 1912 CWA tech preview and the video was upside down there, as well. Here’s hoping that using a 1912 VDA resolves it, otherwise there’s no way we can go CWA yet.

The upside down thing i would think is the vda. Typically the web optimization checks the vda through the ica channel and does it magic. But i could be wrong. Its strange that u have to trigger it to make ot connect that log the guid. Im wondering if u preset the guid on client in the path u seen it if it will pick up without interaction?

Honestly, I hate teams from a maintenance point of view. It's a performance hog too. Thanks Microsoft.

Yea, i was seeing this today in my testing.

We're using it for a while now and working well on Windows 10. Can't use video yet until they finish their optimization pack for Linux clients unfortunately which is taking forever

Once we started using the machine based installer it was much easier to manage

If anybody get its working 100%on 2016 please share. 100% being with the latest vdi installer and 1909 and up. Thank you.

We have almost around 300 user on a Teams an Onedrive PoC, for Onedrive we use FSLogix O365 Container und for Teams we just exlude everything not need it from the Citrix UPM and let then install at logon. Increase logon (ready-ness time) by around 6 sec (more or less)  se plan to rollout at Jan. 20, 2020. 

The whole setup is based on WinSrv 2016.
It works quite good

Agree, Teams is shiiti on an non-peresitent an shared envoirement, from a maint. Point of view... but at the moment there is no way around, user/customer need it/wana to have

Yeah true. Users drive us to new ways of working. Not much that can be done about that.

<@UPF2NEW13> ur doing the user vdi installer?

Thats right Salvi you and i already talked about this. My bad man.

So the problem im seeing is it act sluggish and at times doesnt want to open. This is the machine wide installer. Then it just works lol

So, we useing the machinewide installer, and it works. At the moment we still have both clients, skype and team, the real surprise will come once we will remove skype... (in terms if usability feedback) will come then.
No Bad man...:+1: all good. .. 

We ended up doing a hard cutover to teams back in August away from Skype in the sense that both clients are still there but we are looking the Skype exe down to an AD group for only those that need to video conference until we can do that in teams. So far user adoption has been surprisingly positive (mostly because of the gif support lol) but we put alot into end user training on this one

On 10 it's a bit slow to open but pretty responsive after ( using MCS non persistent / app layering full user layer/ nutanix for what it's worth)

Cool Andrew, any chance you can share any of training material? Or was it a walkthrough training session?

Yes the gif:grinning::grinning::grinning: thats a good one

I think people like the joined up workspace, the chat makes it more friendly.

Let me check with my service desk to see what we used next week ( they did most of it) but no problem!

No rush man, it's Christmas and thank you very much. It was a cheeky ask.

It was in person sessions people could sign up for though but we may have had hand outs too

Oh not a problem. Happy to share if we have it

Thank you man. Merry Christmas community folks.

This is end user adoption here for desktops.... We're all in the same battle haha

Absolutely. It's the most important piece in my opinion.

Thanks Andrew, i will check that too, our colab teams has also startet with edu

Thanks guys. Merry Christmas. Great community

The reason, I'm presenting at the VDI performance summit in Jan and my presentation is all a bout the user experience and how that impacts the perception of speed , increased adoption etc... I'd love to show this as an example. Obviously I'll quote you in it.

Yep... merry christmas and enjoy the time with your love ones... 

I really thought we'd have way more pushback because of it being different than Skype but I accidentally pushed an image out to a small test group that had teams so they "discovered" it on their own and started to spread the word to their group so that helped. Pretty sure the gifs single handedly won them over. I showed a few how you could insert Google image gifs too and that took the immature creativity to a while new level lol.

No hijacking man. Need all the experience we can get

Screen sharing in teams is way better than Skype was for us. Really chomping at the bit for the video call capability on Linux clients you can on Windows and we'll be set

Cool lee... will you prensenting also at synergy?

<@ULHA2PS2H> share u experience when u get this man.

I am not sure yet. Fingers crossed though. Thanks guys, much appreciated.

My CTP application is in but I won't get any feedback until Jan. Even then it may not be public. I'd like to attend Synergy either way though.

:+1::+1::crossed_fingers::skin-tone-2::crossed_fingers::skin-tone-2: i will be there too.

I found this... Might be useful

<https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX253754|https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX253754>

It is indeed... i have it on my „snippet list“ already.
Thanks <@ULLH5JGFR> :+1:

awesome thanks for the link!  in case anyone else is also using linux based clients and waiting for the optimization im on an email trail with different citrix product managers/engineers that i'm TOLD the linux integration is a top priority and we should get an early release whenever its ready . i can keep everyone in the loop if intrested

<@URVNXB96C>  Salvi just posted this. The articles States for linux as well. Not sure if this will help u.
<https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/What-s-New-in-Microsoft-Teams-December-2019/ba-p/1073279|https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/What-s-New-in-Microsoft-Teams-December-2019/ba-p/1073279>

<@ULLH5JGFR> thanks for this!   i wonder if the public preview means installing Teams on Linux or the HDX optimization when using a linux based client to connect to a windows vda.  the Citrix contacts last week wrote asking which client we're using, what cpu our hypervisor has and vda version so hoping that means they are getting close

Thanks to Salvi lol. The video looks like a native install. I don't see the optimization banner in the teams window.

I would hope if they finally got the native install for linux cracked it means the optimization part is soon to follow

Yep... thats why i posted, but i just notice, i did it wrong.. sorry.
However, due our discussion yesterday, i thought it would be instressting for all.
Especialy the linux part.. for <@URVNXB96C> and yes <@ULLH5JGFR>  i do not see the opt. Point as well.:thinking_face::thinking_face:

Alot of changes and delivery of citrix products this month. Good for all of us. I'm just happy Microsoft is actually putting citrix links in their docs now. For me it's been a huge gap

That's awesome! Alot of people are getting anxious art my company for the audio/video call ability

I understand that. So im having to show them to leave another audio/video software and use Teams 100%. They are wanting to deploy teams everywhere, but they are not educated on the technology. So im going to show them this

Thanks for the ping Ray. We're trying to use Teams machine installer on 2016 Server, XA 7.15 CU5, PVS, FSLogix. We can launch Teams the first time during a session, then it will randomly hang, and we will be unable to start it back up until we delete all .json files in %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams folder. I would love to be able to get this working, and am very interested in the linux optimization as well.

I had the same issue, and to use x86 installer to make it work, since then no issue.
But i opened a case at MS about that but no clear solved state yet.

Yes, we use the x64 installer. I'll try with the x86.

Currently running Teams as a Chrome app, and that seems to work OK. I suppose we can do this for now...

Yea I did 64 bit as well. Hmmm curious now aobut the 32 bit will be better. Good call Salvi

yes can be an approach, which will work.
But for those who want to have the native client, for maybe outlook intergration, like status presence, i guess there is no way around (unless there is a special plugin for this, wihch i dont know)

32-bit seems to work well, so far. Wonder why x64 sucks so much?

I am currently running a pilot with the 32-bit installer with around 300 user.
Me too, trying to find out with MS but i dont have a clear aswar yet.... i am struggling hours... to find why, but i wasnt successfully unfortunately!!!!

Hi <@ULHA2PS2H>, Teams x86 still works? is this a way to go for you?

Hi <@UPF2NEW13> - we have just put x86 Teams into our QA environment to start our testing. It will go to Test for UAT next. So far, so good!

Happy new year to all, hope everyone had a good start.
Straightaway started with teams stuff..:grimacing:
Does any one had issue with multi-session os (RDS) using Teams machine installer, when user wants to use teams meeting add-in? the add-in appears inactive and not able to enable it.. 

That's odd...our Teams add-in appears to be working correctly. We are not using it at the moment, and when I tested it, it appeared to work. Server 2016, XA 7.15 CU5, Teams x86.

Anyone run into this or have any advice? In my testing I'm getting around 30sec login (MCS non persistent / app layering full user layer) on html5 login and 60 sec or more on my Linux based thin clients with dual monitors and am stumped

director.png

narrowing this down further, definitely seems to be a big change in speeds when we try w/ dual monitors vs single.   from what i can tell the big bottleneck is during the step where you see director attach a non persistent vda to the session ...after that it seems about the same

i opened a citrix ticket on this but hoping someone here has some genius ideas for us.  we've been battling login speed issues for a while and i have it really close to being good if i can figure out this dual monitor delay

I believe Andrew Gresbach was looking for the linux side of things. Great find

Thx Julian. I see the same error at the moment :dizzy_face:

Me too. Had to run a manual install. I was more interested in testing features.

Sitting here since the morning and trying stuff :rage: Nice christmas present from Citrix

Now.... That was something I was not willing to do. Lol. You are a bit of an IT soldier Julian ;-)

I’m not having any issues with unattended install

Can you share the part of your script where you are creating the site database? "New-XDDatabase -AdminAddress $ComputerName -SiteName $SiteName -DataStore Site -DatabaseServer $DatabaseServer -DatabaseName $DatabaseName_Site -ErrorAction Stop"

Thanks for this <@ULJUX26GG> need and will test, only upgrade has been did so far.. no issue at this point in time.

New-XDDatabase -AdminAddress $target -SiteName $SiteName -DataStore Site -DatabaseServer $DatabaseServer -DatabaseName $DatabaseName_Site -DatabaseCredentials $Database_CredObject

Looks like the difference is i'm passing credentials

I am not passing the credentials because the service/build user with the SQL rights is doing an auto login and then executing the script.

DatabaseCredentials: The security credentials, in the form of a PSCredential object, that will be used to connect to the SQL Server specified by the DatabaseServer parameter. _If this parameter is not provided, then the implicit credentials of the user running the cmdlet are used to connect to the SQL Server._

i assume you are rebooting before configuring?

WS2019 + Express 2017 but I guess thats not the problem

For my Controller install args, I'm using the following.

"/quiet /configure_firewall /COMPONENTS CONTROLLER,DESKTOPDIRECTOR /IGNORE_HW_CHECK_FAILURE /nosql /noreboot'"

$Arguments = "/components controller,desktopstudio /configure_firewall /nosql /noreboot /quiet /logpath ""$LogDir"""

you might consider passing the credential just as a test. maybe the bug is in how it assumes the install account's credential?

Same error message when passing the credentials

My New-XDDatabase is identical to Steve's.

XD install - /quiet /noreboot /configure_firewall

Can you check your SQL logs to see if the login is successful?

SQL Log is empty. Cant see any connection from the controller

No problem for me but I always use a credential object even if it is the same as the connected user

Question for the people with the error message: Are you using MDT to build the machine? When I interactive execute the script the PowerShell cmdlet is doing its job and creates the site database. It’s just not working during a Task Sequence. Tried with runas and Auto-Login with the service build account. 

Is it a UAC/execution policy thing. I need to test this. Won't happen for a few days though. Busy busy family things.

UAC is disabled/Execution Policy configured to ByPass during deployment. Family goes first :christmas_tree::slightly_smiling_face::wave::skin-tone-2:

Perhaps MDT is using system account. Try to output the whoamis command to check this point. Mery Chrismas !

Then I would have had problems with previous deployments as well. As posted on Twitter: Staging  a 7.15 CU5 controller is working without any errors. It is not running in the system context :+1::skin-tone-4: