Citrix - how to keep smartclient apps from reloading every time they start

Question

Our company uses Citrix to remotely access a terminal server for remote users to run smart client applications in a virtual window on its machine.

The problem is that smartclient applications load every time the user launches them, although the version on the remote citrix server does not change. This is because the user profile is cleared every time they close a Citrix session.

Is there a way to avoid this and keep clearing the user profile? Not clearing the profile results in wasting space on citrix servers and damaging profile problems.

Answer 1

I can't talk about the details on Citrix servers. However, with ClickOnce you cannot tell where the application is installed. It is installed under the user profile, no ifs, ands or buts. One of the main goals with ClickOnce was to improve security and install applications in a profile, which became easier. So, if you clear the profile, you are stuck.

However, were you unable to simply deploy the application to the Citrix server without ClickOnce? Most .Net applications can simply be deployed to xcopy, so it would be fairly easy to write a few batch files to copy the latest deployment to your Citrix server and skip ClickOnce together.

Answer 2

In a Citrix environment, you can use the Citrix URL redirect feature (in Feature Release 2) to redirect ClickOnce URLs to the local computer ( http://xxx.xxx/myapplication.application ). This will cause the browser window to open on the local computer, and not on the Citrix machine. As soon as this happens, ClickOnce takes over and installs the user on the local computer, and not inside Citrix. Running locally anyway will give you all the usual benefits of ClickOnce.

You do not want to install inside Citrix due to codeConcussion answer issues. In addition, ClickOnce does not support mandatory or temporary profiles, as the user probably has inside Citrix.