Add Citrix To Chrome

| 30-04-2021
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On this page:

  1. Add Citrix To Chrome
  2. Add Citrix To Chrome Settings

Preferences file in Windows profile. I noticed that allowed protocols are stored here if I choose 'Always open these types of links in associated app' It's very hard to add the needed lines to the Preferences file automatically, specially for existing users with Chrome already in use. Preferences file in Windows profile. I noticed that allowed protocols are stored here if I choose 'Always open these types of links in associated app' It's very hard to add the needed lines to the Preferences file automatically, specially for existing users with Chrome already in use. Citrix Workspace app is a new client from Citrix that works similar to Citrix Receiver and is fully backward-compatible with your organization’s Citrix infrastructure. Citrix Workspace app provides the full capabilities of Citrix Receiver, as well as new capabilities based on your organization’s Citrix deployment.

  • Windows and macOS
    • Install Citrix Workspace app

Overview

For Linux instructions, see Use IUanyWare in Linux.

Follow the instructions below to use Citrix Workspace app with IUanyWare, as recommended by UITS. If you prefer to use the light version, see Access and use IUanyWare with Citrix Receiver for Web.

This video tutorial demonstrates how to add the Citrix Workspace ADD ON to the Chrome Browser. It's an easy alternative to the standard installation, but ma. Hi, Unless you are using mandatory profiles keep an eye on your profile bloat for users of Chrome. This wormed its way into our environment by users installing it into their profile and easily saw profiles in excess of 2gb simply due to the cache this browser generates and this was a serious concern for us folk running provisioned servers.

For help with IUanyWare, contact your campus Support Center, or search this KnowledgeBase.

Windows and macOS

Install Citrix Workspace app

Windows

  • Follow these instructions to download and install the latest supported version of Citrix Workspace app. UITS does not support the use of any other version.
  • Your computer should be running Windows 10 or Windows 8.x.
  • Use the browser of your choice to install Citrix Workspace app and launch IUanyWare.
  • The correct IUanyWare URL is https://iuanyware.iu.edu; to avoid misleading warning messages, always use the https:// prefix for a secure connection.

To install the UITS-supported version of Citrix Workspace app:

  1. Go to receiver.citrix.com.
  2. The site will auto-detect your operating system, and provide a link to download the appropriate installer. Click the link to download the installer.
  3. Your download will automatically launch; click the installer to run it.
  4. Leave Enable Single Sign-onunchecked.
  5. Leave Add Account unchecked. Proceed to Launch IUanyWare applications, below.

macOS

Chrome
  • Follow these instructions to download and install the latest supported version of Citrix Workspace app. UITS does not support the use of any other version.
  • For supported versions of macOS, see Prerequisites to install Citrix Workspace app.
  • Use the browser of your choice to install Citrix Workspace app and launch IUanyWare.
  • The correct IUanyWare URL is https://iuanyware.iu.edu; to avoid misleading warning messages, always use the https:// prefix for a secure connection.

To install the UITS-supported version of Citrix Workspace app:

  1. Go to receiver.citrix.com.
  2. The site will auto-detect your operating system, and provide a link to download the appropriate installer. Click the link to download the installer.
  3. A new Citrix page will open. Double-click the *.dmg download, and then click to install Citrix.
  4. Follow the installation instructions.
  5. Leave Add Account unchecked. Proceed to Launch IUanyWare applications, below.

Launch IUanyWare applications

To launch an application or desktop in IUanyWare:

  1. Log into IUanyWare.
  2. At any time, including when launching applications, you may be prompted to select Open Citrix Workspace/Receiver Launcher. Click remember my choice for Citrix Workspace/Receiver Launcher to avoid being prompted each time.
  3. On the 'Welcome' screen:
    • If you have Citrix Workspace app installed, click Detect Receiver.
      • In some cases, after you click Detect Receiver, you may need to click Already installed.
    • If you don't have the app and don't want to install it, click Use light version.
  4. You'll land on your HOME tab, from which you can access your favorites.
  5. Select the APPS or DESKTOPS tab, and then click the icon of the desktop or app you wish to launch.

Switch between Citrix Workspace app and web Receiver

You can switch between using Citrix Workspace app and the web Receiver (the 'light version').

  1. At the top right, click the gear icon, and then select Account Settings.
  2. Click Change Citrix Receiver.
    • Select Detect Receiver to use Citrix Workspace app, installed on your machine.
    • Select Use light version to use Citrix Receiver for Web.

Add or remove favorites

To add a favorite in IUanyWare:

  1. On the APPS or DESKTOPS tab, locate an application you'd like to place in your favorites.
  2. Click the star at the top left.

To remove an application or desktop from your favorites:

Citrix
  1. On the HOME tab, locate the application or desktop you'd like to remove from your favorites.
  2. Click the star at the top left.

Search in IUanyWare

To search for anything in IUanyWare, click the magnifying glass at the top right of the IUanyWare Storefront and fill in the search field. All apps and desktops that match your search terms will display.

iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

To access and use IUanyWare apps on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you must first install and configure the currently supported version of Citrix Workspace app.

To view a list of supported iOS versions, see Citrix Workspace app for iOS.

Add Citrix To Chrome

To install and configure Citrix Workspace app on your iOS device:

  1. Search the Apple App Store for 'Citrix Workspace' to find the appropriate app, and then install it.
  2. Once the app is installed, tap Workspace to launch it, and then tap Get Started.
  3. In the 'Address' field, enter https://storefront.iuanyware.iu.edu/, and then tap Next.
  4. Enter your IU username and passphrase.
  5. After you enter your credentials:
    • If you have the Duo Mobile app installed on any device, you'll automatically receive a Duo push. Accept the push to complete your configuration.
    • If you don't have the Duo Mobile app installed but have at least one phone number set up for Duo, you'll automatically receive a call at your primary Duo phone number. Accept the call to complete your configuration.
  6. Enter your IU username and passphrase a second time, if prompted.

Once you're logged in, you'll see your list of favorites on the main screen. Click + (the plus sign) to the left of the window to see a list of available applications and desktops.

If you do not see a list of apps and desktops:

  1. Close and then relaunch the Workspace app.
  2. Click the gear icon at the top right, and select Manage Account.
  3. Under 'Select your account', click the option connected to your username.
  4. Click + (the plus sign) again to see a list of available apps and desktops.

From here, browse the software category folders to find your desired applications. Tap the corresponding + (plus sign) to add an application to your list of favorites on the main screen. Tap a software icon to launch a virtualized application. When you're finished with your application, close it the same way you close the desktop version.

Add Citrix To Chrome

Search in IUanyWare on your iOS device

There is one search field for the iOS Citrix Workspace app. To get to the search field, click + (the plus sign) to the left of the window; the search field is at the very top of the panel that opens.

Android devices

To access and use IUanyWare apps on your Android device, you must first install and configure the currently supported version of Citrix Workspace app.

Add Citrix To Chrome

If Citrix Workspace app is already installed on your device, you may have trouble connecting to IUanyWare after the app upgrades to a newer version. To avoid this problem, before using these instructions, open the installed version and delete your existing account.

To install and configure Citrix Workspace app on your Android device:

  1. Search the Google Play store for 'Citrix Workspace' to find the appropriate app, and then install it.
  2. Once the app is installed, tap Workspace to launch it.
  3. On the Welcome screen, tap Get Started.
  4. For 'Address', enter https://storefront.iuanyware.iu.edu.
  5. If prompted, accept the server certificate.
  6. Enter your IU username and passphrase.
  7. In the 'Domain' field, if prompted, enter ads.iu.edu.
  8. Tap Sign on and complete a Duo Two-Step Login.

Once installation and setup are complete, in Citrix Workspace app, tap the site you added, enter your IU passphrase, and then tap Log On to access and use available IUanyWare apps. By default, you'll land on your HOME tab. To search for other apps or desktops, select the menu bar at the top left and tap APPS or DESKTOPS.

Search in IUanyWare on your Android device

There is one search field for the Citrix Workspace app for Android. Click the search icon at the upper right to search all available applications and desktops.

Chrome OS devices

On Chrome OS devices (such as Chromebooks):

  1. Go to the Web Store and search for 'Citrix Workspace'. Make sure to select the app offered by Citrix, and install it. Once it's installed, open the app.
  2. In the 'Account URL' field, type https://storefront.iuanyware.iu.edu, and then click Connect:.
  3. Under 'Please log on to IUAnyWare', log in with your IU username and passphrase, and then complete a Duo Two-Step Login.
  4. You will land on your HOME tab. Click the APPS or DESKTOPS tab to see other published options.

Add Citrix To Chrome Settings

Add or remove favorites on your Chrome OS device

Add citrix to chrome search engine

To add a favorite in IUanyWare:

  1. On the APPS or DESKTOPS tab, locate an application you'd like to place in your favorites.
  2. Click the star at the top left.

To remove an application or desktop from your favorites:

  1. On the HOME tab, locate the application or desktop you'd like to remove from your favorites.
  2. Click the star at the top left.

Search in IUanyWare on your Chrome OS device

To search for anything in IUanyWare, click the magnifying glass at the top right of the IUanyWare Storefront and fill in the search field. All apps and desktops that match your search terms will display.

Citrix Browser Content Redirection – Part 1

Recently I worked with a customer, in the education, which had issues with video playback in their Citrix sessions. They used several platforms to watch videos as they use it during their student lessons. The different platforms were :

  • Locally, utilizing VLC player
  • YouTube / Vimeo or other video streaming service

One of their biggest complaints was the low frame rate and the incorrect lip-sync. After taking a quick look at the environment (which was not build by me) I noticed a few things:

  • No GPUs available to offload the decoding of the video playback (and the Encoding of Citrix HDX).
  • High CPU usage during video playback which made the entire session sometimes unresponsive. ICA Latency would be around 1,5 seconds at those times. This introduced the Lip-Sync issues as the video was rendered to slow to get in sync.
  • Low clock speed CPUs (2.1 – 2.4 GHz) which made the lack of GPU power even more visible.

To give the users a good User Experience we had to come up with a solution. Luckily for us, the customer had quite new endpoints (Intel i3 & Windows 10, managed with Citrix UEM ) so the idea to offload the videos directly came into our minds. Offloading resource-intensive tasks to local hardware is one of the oldest tricks you can use in a Citrix environment. In the past several years many different types of offloading options came and went:

  • DirectX Command Remoting (DCR) ( Deprecated in 7.12 )
  • HDX Flash redirection ( Deprecated in 7.15 LTSR )
  • Windows Media redirection
  • HTML5 multimedia redirection
  • Browser Content Redirection

As we see more and more usage of online video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo the option to offload HTML5 multimedia is a very interesting one. There is only one big caveat to this solution, it needs a custom JavaScript injection to work and it doesn’t work with Adaptive Bitrate Streaming. So long story short, it only works internally ( where you have control of the websites hosted ) and it doesn’t even support YouTube due to the Adaptive Bitrate Streaming.

Citrix found a way around this issue and introduced Browser Content Redirection ( further referenced to as BCR ) with XenDesktop 7.16 which solves the issues described above. With BCR you can redirect the complete Browser viewport to the local endpoint without the need of custom JavaScript injections.

In the initial release of BCR only Internet Explorer 11 redirection was supported, but with the release of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops 1808 support for Chrome was also added. Here are some facts for BCR:

  • Support Internet Explorer 11, no plugin needed, since 7.16
  • Supports Google Chrome (V66 or higher), with a plugin, since CVAD 1808
  • Needs the Citrix Workspace App 1808 or higher
  • Works on Windows and Linux endpoints
  • Redirected websites are controlled by User Policies
  • Enabled by default for YouTube

BCR is a relatively easy feature to configure, it only contains a few policies:

Content Fetching and Rendering scenarios

With BCR enabled, there are 3 ways to fetch the content. It depends on the situation or security policy which scenario suits the best.

  1. Server Fetch & Server Render, in this scenario there is no redirection. This can happen due to different reasons:
    • BCR is not enabled
    • The website is not whitelisted or is on the blacklist
    • An error occurred while trying to perform BCR
  2. Server Fetch & Client Render, in this scenario the server fetches the webpage but the rendering is redirected to the client. The data is transported from the VDA to the endpoint through a virtual channel (CTXPFWD). This scenario is useful when you use ThinClients that don’t have internet access. It is simply activated by setting the Proxy Configuration Policy.
  3. Client Fetch & Client Render, in this scenario the client utilizes the built-in Chromium browser in the Workspace App to contact the website directly. This means no CPU usage or network traffic on the VDA.

When option 2 or 3 fails it automatically falls back to option 1, where it will fetch and render on the VDA. In some scenarios this could be unwanted, luckily there is a policy to disable this fallback behavior. To disable the fallback you should configure the “Windows media fallback prevention” policy and set it to “Play all content only on client” or “Play only client-accessible content” on client.

As stated earlier you don’t need to create manual JavaScript injections on your websites like it was the case with HTLM5 Video redirection. When the Chrome extension or Internet Explorer BHO (Browser Helper Object) detects a whitelisted BCR website it injects the HdxVideo.js file. This file is used to redirect the DOM to the Client. On the VDA side it just “simply” blanks out the page and on the Client side the Workspace App places an overlay on top of the blanked DOM and renders the website with the HDXBrowser engine. This gives the user the perception that the website is displayed in the VDA. This workflow can be visualized in the following diagram:

Simple test configuration of BCR

To test BCR it is best to start simple by configuring it for YouTube and Vimeo. To do this we can create a simple user policy with only 2 settings:

  • BCR set to Allowed
  • BCR ACL Configuration with the following URLs:
    • https://vimeo.com/*
    • https://youtube.com/*
    • https://youtube.nl/*

As you can see I also added youtube.nl to the list as I’m living in The Netherlands and so I’m redirected to this website and it is very likely a user uses this domain to connect to YouTube instead of using the .com domain.

The next step is to install the Chrome Plugin if utilizing the Chrome Browser:

  • Go to: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions
  • Search for Citrix
  • Select the Browser Content Redirection plugin and click Add to Chrome

If the extension is installed and loaded you will notice a small green dot in the upper right corner of your Chrome browser:

For Enterprise scenarios, you might want to push this automatically to the users by utilizing Group Policies. This is described in the Citrix Docs.

To check if our policy applies correctly and BCR is engaged we can simply start our web browser and browse to the configured URLs. After the website has loaded just right-click somewhere in the DOM. If the redirection is working correctly you should see the following menu

If you open the Task Manager in the VDA you should also see no CPU usage by the browser when accessing these websites. On the Client side, you will see a HDX Browser Overlay( HDXBrowserCEF.exe) process. Also when moving the browser around on the screen in the VDA you will see a slight delay.

In my opinion the “new” Browser Content Redirection feature is a big step in enhancing the User eXperience in scenarios where you don’t have the luxury of high powered hardware on the VDA side. With the different options to fetch the content you can even make sure that your security policies on the content are still applied and no web-data is fetched by the client, even in a remote scenario.

I hope to write a Part 2 soon where I will dig deeper in BCR and give some examples how to configure it for websites like Office 365 or Microsoft Stream.

  • https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/multimedia/browser-content-redirection.html
  • https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-virtual-apps-desktops/policies/reference/ica-policy-settings/browser-content-redirection-policy-settings.html

  1. Hi Rody,

    Great piece of information contained in this blog! Thanks for the write up!

    Ferry

  2. Good stuff man.

  3. I followed this doc, and everything worked 100%. Thank you .

  4. Hi Rody,
    Goed artikel over BCR.
    Wanneer zou Microsoft Edge worden ondersteund?

    Groet Piet

  5. Hi Rody, weet je al wanneer Microsoft Edge wordt ondersteund?

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