Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

What happened to the Citrix DaaS Remote PowerShell SDK Global Variables?

by

If you are used to checking, verifying, or even leveraging the Global variables, such as XDAuthToken, XDSDKAuth, XDSDKProxy and XDSDKUser, created by the Get-XDCredentials cmdlet, Citrix has made changes to the way these cmdlets store and use this data. They have now moved these 4 values into the new NonPersistentMetadata property of the Get-XDCredentials cmdlet output.

But of course there is no documentation to explain this change or even make us aware of it. In fact all their documentation still refers to the global variables. Very frustrating!

Read more

The Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops & Desktops as a Service Health Check Script on Steroids

by

UPDATE: Version 1.5.9 released on 3rd March 2026. See below for all the details.

Since November 2014 many of us have been using the amazing Sacha Thomet’s XenApp and XenDesktop Health Check Script. I’ve made my own modifications to it over the years, but never contributed and shared anything publicly until June 2025. My motivation is to give the community some amazing visibility of their Citrix environments that they’ve never had before. I took the last release from Sacha, which was the February 2022 update, together with some modules I’d previously written, and overhauled the whole process from top to bottom, and wrote even more modules. Sacha has kindly committed my pull requests to his GitHub repository, which officially adds me as Contributor!

CVAD & DaaS Health Check Script on Steroids

Read more

Development Planning for the Citrix Self-Service Session Reset Tool

by

The Citrix Self-Service Session Reset Tool is software that I write and manage in my own time on my lab equipment. It is often challenging to find the time to work on it as I have many projects on the go. And life in general often gets in the way. I get a lot of queries asking me when the next release will be available and if the feature they are looking for will be included. Rather than continually updating the main article, and responding to queries, I wanted to document where the project is at and what further work is to be completed.

SSSRT Kanban

Version 1.9 was the last public release back on 1st June 2022.

Why not ditch my APIs and use the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops REST APIs that are now included with on-prem Delivery Controllers from version 2209 or later?

I work in the Mining Industry where we have OT (Operational Technology) networks, also known as PCN (Process Control Network). This is a typical setup within the mining, oil and gas industries, as well as utilities such as water and electricity. Some have their own AD domain with no trusts. But they all typically have a separate Citrix Site due to risk mitigation and change management requirements, and what we refer to in the mining industry as “site survivability”, meaning that a mine site can keep running when all comms links are lost. At the time of writing this, many of these sites are still 2203 LTSR or lower. Until these platforms have been upgraded to 2402 LTSR or later, I cannot leverage the built in Citrix APIs, and will continue to leverage the PowerShell SDK that my APIs are built on. Apart from that, I also wanted to be inclusive and did not want to place others at a disadvantage that are still running older versions.

If you are running 2209 and above on-prem, or just using Citrix DaaS (Cloud), the APIs are there for you to leverage. So all you need to do is create a cool user interface (UI) using a Blazor Server Application.

HOWEVER, I have since found limitations with the CVAD APIs, especially for on-prem. The Citrix Product Manager has suggested that I should be continuing to use the PowerShell cmdlets for the foreseeable future, as the CVAD APIs are not expected to be “production” ready for some time.

I’m working on the following before the next version can be publicly released, which I’m planning for June 2025 early 2026:

  • Securing the API secret information in the CtxSites.xml file
  • JavaScript Bug
  • Refactor Code
  • Enable/Disable Maintenance Mode API
  • Citrix PowerShell SDK Bug

Read more

Citrix Self-Service Session Reset Tool Process Flows

by

***Updated for the release of v1.6.

There are eight (8) main process flows for the how the Citrix Self-Service Session Reset Tool works:

  1. User Opens Web Page Process Flow
  2. Get Sessions Process Flow
  3. Logoff Sessions Process Flow
  4. Disconnect Sessions Process Flow
  5. Restart Machines and Forcefully Restart Machines Process Flow
  6. Hide Sessions and Unhide Sessions Process Flow
  7. Get Processes Process Flow
  8. Terminate Processes Process Flow

Each flow is documented and visually represented below.

Read more

Citrix Self-Service Session Reset Tool

by

***Please refer to my article on Development Planning for the Citrix Self-Service Session Reset Tool to learn about what updates and new features are being worked on.

***If using a release less than v1.9, please refer to the release history below to understand the new features, enhancements and fixes now included.

This tool has been labelled as a game changer for any Citrix customer. It’s proven time and time again that it has a huge impact on reducing the burden on the Service Desk and Operations Teams by empowering users to get themselves back up and running in the shortest possible time.

No matter how stable your Citrix platform is, one of the biggest challenges for any Citrix customer is being able to reduce Service Desk calls and user downtime by empowering users with the ability to clear their own sessions, or recover them by terminating rogue processes. Several free scripts and a paid for tool are available, but none of them really achieve the best outcome. Some of them still require users to run a “Citrix session”, which they often can not do because the broker may be trying to reconnect them back to a stuck, hung, broken session or unhealthy host. When this happens they get into an endless loop of failure and get very frustrated. This can impact brand reputation and user satisfaction, leaving users with a poor felt experience. Some have even implemented a separate Citrix Environment to run these scripts from. In my opinion this is as waste of resources and an overhead for management. It still doesn’t always work due to Citrix Workspace (Receiver) reconnection issues and is often over complicating it for users.

My goals were to:

  • Create a tool that is easy to use, even for users that struggle with technology.
  • Create a tool that enables users to not only get themselves back up and running in the shortest possible time, but also reduces the reliance on Service Desk and even second level support teams.
  • Create a tool that does not rely on any ICA/HDX connectivity to a Citrix platform. This was extremely important!
  • Create a tool that would allow support for multiple Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD aka XenApp and XenDesktop) Sites.
  • Create a tool that works across trusted Domains.
  • Create a tool that works across the IT and OT landscape.
  • Create a tool that can easily be extended/expanded for other use cases.
  • Create a tool that’s modular so that other brokers such as VMware Horizon and Leostream can easily be added.
  • Create API’s with a Web front-end.
  • Create a tool that can be used to develop a microapp.
  • Create a tool that can easily be called by any scripting language such as PowerShell and Python.
  • Create a tool that can be enhanced, debugged and supported by others.
  • Create a tool for the community, because I love doing that!

Read more