I have worked in the EUC world for a while now with a focus on user-experience. Admittedly the vast majority of my skillset sits in the Citrix based delivery of these workloads, however, I often stumble across engagements where native RDS services or alternative solutions are in place, and I find that the concepts I... Continue Reading →
FSLogix Containers – Search Index Considerations and Troubleshooting
This post is not addressing Windows 10 Multi-Session or Windows Server 2019 Per-User Search. For changes with these Operating Systems, please see my follow up post here This post was initially posted on the FSLogix Blog which has been recently removed. I thought it was worth reposting as the content is still relevant. Extremely important... Continue Reading →
AppMasking The Windows Start Menu
Back again banting on about the Windows Start Menu (surprised?). I am hoping this is one of those James Rankin “final say” style blog posts where I can put this bad boy to bed because I am pretty sure I have my silver bullet to providing a nice start menu environment consistently and efficiently. Just... Continue Reading →
Studio Apps to WEM to address Citrix Session Sharing challenges
I recently engaged with a customer who had chosen to deploy Citrix 7.15 LTSR across multiple sites utilising Windows Server 2016 published desktops as their primary delivery platform. The user base had been a long term consumer of Windows Server 2008 R2 based published desktops, and the IT teams had utilised the typical management technique... Continue Reading →
Windows 10 Start Menu Custom Folders and Shortcut Aggregation
The Windows 10 Start Menu is like the gift that keeps giving. Every corner is odd behaviour or barely documented fun which can lead to a high level of "WTF" moments. The latest one for me is all around the creation of custom folders within the Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 Start Menu, a... Continue Reading →
Modern Start Menu Management and Windows Toolbars
The Windows 10 Modern Start Menu has introduced a range of challenges and frustrations for end users and admins alike, particularly within environments that operated for long periods with a typical Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 redirected Start Menu, a technique which no longer lends itself well to the new modern Start Menu.... Continue Reading →
Selective Control of the Immersive Control Panel (Settings) in Server 2016
It has been a considerable amount of time that the inability to nicely manage the Immersive Control Panel or "Settings" App provided in place of the traditional Control Panel in Server 2016 has frustrated Citrix and RDS admins. Finally as of the September Cumulative Update for Server 2016, we can selectively lock this down in... Continue Reading →
Storefront Resource Integration with WEM 4.6
One of the cool new features of WEM 4.6 is the ability to directly call Storefront resources as WEM applications and push into relevant Start Menu's or desktops the same as you would any other WEM driven application. We have been able to achieve the same result previously by utilising the receiver selfservice.exe with a... Continue Reading →
Windows 10 Start Menu: declutter the default
A short while back I wrote a rant about my dislike of the tile management in Windows 10, and my view on trying not to manage these tiles with tools such as Workspace Environment Management. I have had some fun across a few projects since I wrote that post, and my view on managing them... Continue Reading →
Citrix WEM, Modern Start Menus and Tiles
The Problem: Tiles are %^#$. There are reported challenges all over the place with the pinning of custom tiles to the start menu in Windows 10 and Server 2016 with tools such as WEM. The issue is not so much roaming them (which is a challenge in itself), it's more the completely inconsistent behaviour when... Continue Reading →