MIn my opinion, Citrix Director is the best part of XenDesktop 7—as long as it isn’t viewed as a replacement for EdgeSight. But that’s exactly what Citrix has done, and in my view, it’s a mistake. For customers who have actually used EdgeSight or still do, the „new“ EdgeSight is more or less a joke. For these customers, Citrix needs to do significantly more or acquire another company or software solution, such as „Nexthink.“.
Once again, the „EdgeSight“ director is a great integration, but here's my list of things that could be improved, and I hope Citrix will address them in future versions.
Based on my practical experience with Citrix Director, here is my wish list:
The Director's Wish List
- Reel with „“Mirror-only" permission
Users with the „Mirror Only“ role log in to Director and can search for users (including area filters). After selecting a user, a separate page or pop-up should appear with only the mirror option or the option to mirror immediately. Not everyone likes the fact that „normal“ users can see a lot of details about another user without that user knowing. - Application Details
The Activity Manager displays a lot of details, such as which website is currently open or the subject line of an email. That’s not good. It’s an invasion of privacy and should be fixed immediately.
- App usage for apps that have NOT been published
Why is application usage tracking limited to published applications? I can view all the details about an application in Director, but I can't track it. What about customers who primarily publish only a desktop? - Resource (RAM, CPU, I/O) usage per server, deployment group
The load index could be used, but it doesn't provide any insight (even with active advanced load rules); it might be possible with customized reports, but it should already be available in Director—right out of the box! - Ability to set Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Set thresholds—green, yellow, and red—for RAM, CPU, I/O, and average login time. The customer can receive a report, and admins and managers can get an email notification letting them know whether everything is „green“ or not.
- Placement of buttons or prompts for actions
Want to mirror a user? The button to log the user out is right next to it, and if you click the wrong one, the user will be logged out immediately without any confirmation! So either reposition the buttons, or better yet, include a confirmation prompt for certain actions. Logging out isn't the only problem… - Great! I can see the average login duration in the dashboard. It’s very detailed, down to the time it takes to process GPOs. But where’s the list of users for that? If hundreds of users log in within a short period of time, there are still a lot of users to review. Director shows something like this: Between 8:00 and 8:05 (instead of the affected users), and this could easily be 10–50 users! So how do I find the user who had a long login time? Citrix, make it easier for me to find these users so I can do something about the slow login.
- In my opinion, the interactive login process takes way too long! Compared to other programs such as ControlUp, for example, 15 to 20 seconds too long. That makes it quite difficult to get reasonable turnaround times
- HDX-Insight Integration
Sure, I can get the data from Netscaler, but it’s not worth paying extra for the Netscaler Enterprise Edition when I get the same thing in Director (if that’s supposed to be a reason to go with Enterprise). As it stands, it should be free for everyone—HDX Insight for all Netscaler versions. - Where is the „Exclude“ filter when searching for users? Anyone using a service account to install software won't want to see that account in the search results. So an „Exclude“ filter would be great!
What else would you like to see on the list?
