AppSense - Mouse Lags in a XenApp Environment

Hi,

I have installed a new XenApp 6.5 Farm with Local Profiles and AppSense User Virtualization. So I had the problem that on the first login the mouse movement in a Published Application was very, very sluggish. So after two or three days full of testing I have found that the following key seems to be a problem: HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask
After some more searching in the Internet I have found the following forum entry which gave me the sollution: http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=261090
As a short compendium you have to make a AppSense Logon Configuration or a Group Policy Preference which sets the above registry key to hex : 90,12,01,80. I have provided a screenshot how it looks like:

This should solve your problem with the sluggish mouse movements.

Grettings

michael.obernberger

AppSense - CCA on provisioned images

Hi,

I have updated my AppSense Management Server last week to the latest version (8.3.43.0) and had the problem after updating my Golden Images with the new CCA, that there was some weird behavior in the AMC, that some machines disappeared or showed status with 0% rolled out. After a short discussion the AppSense support gave me the solution.
It seems that something has changed in the 8.3.x CCA because at previous CCA updates I have installed the new CCA on the golden image and provisioned it again and it worked ok. With the new CCA you have to delete the group-id and machine-id of the CCA deployment and then provision the machine. So here is the correct process of updating the CCA:

1. Install the latest CCA on the machine in Private image mode.
2. Before provisioning the machine stop the service "AppSense Client Communications Agent"
3. Now change the the following two registry keys to 0:

• [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AppSense Technologies\Communications Agent] "machine id"="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"
• [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\AppSense Technologies\Communications Agent] "group id"="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"

With these steps all machines should show up correctly in your AMC.

Update: This is also applies for vmware linked clones. Thanks to Peter for this information.


Grettings

michael.obernberger

AppSense - Working with Else If Conditions

Hi,

Appsense introduced the Else If condition in version 8.1 or 8.2, I am not sure about that but it is one of the greates new conditions you get in EM. I will post an example where you could see, you powerful it is.

I have a XenApp 6.5 Farm with Office 2007 installed with various languages and I want to make sure, that the users from the various countries getting the correct language displayed. So I have a security group for each lanugange called: All_English, All_French, All_Italian and the default is german.
So the first thing I have made is a Process Started trigger for the different Office applications (Access, Word, Excel, Outlook, Powerpoint), then I am checking with a reusable node if you connect to the Citrix-Server and connecting via ICA so that language isn't changed for Administrators which are connecting via RDP. So here is a screenshot from the configuration right now:

Then I am configuring some Registry Keys which should prevent the users from any manual input on first start and doing some general Group policy actions.

And so the last thing is now to configure the language correctly for the different users with an Else If Condition. I am starting with the first one which is checking if the user is in the group All_English and configuring the group policies with the language for that and then add a new Else If for French and a new one for Italian and the last thing is an Else condition if the user is in none of the above groups to configure Office in German and thats it. I will attach some screenshot for you to better understand. The first one is a picture how I am checking the group membership in the If Condition. the second one is a overview of which GPOs I am setting. The third one, is the whole structure of the Else If condition.

So hopefully you now better understand or see how powerful this condition is to structure you configuration easier and faster.

Grettings

michael.obernberger