XenDesktop 7.6 Client -> Server redirection .docx Fix

Down and Dirty no picture Blog for today..

Recently I was working a complex XenDesktop 7.6 implementation at a large customer.  The project ended up with Windows 7 VDI's launching XenApp hosted applications. The VDI was really a landing pad, and a way to browse both the network and the internet.

Everything appeared to work well once we got that beast of Single Sign On working correctly (oh Web Interface how I miss you, and your simple single check box for so many things) .  Excel files, Doc files, etc all redirected nicely..

That is it all worked nicely till we noticed that .docx did not have the correct icon.  For whatever reason Wordpad is the default handler, and Citrix can't seem to trump that setting out of the box.  In previous versions ( IMA versions) we could decide who would win in this situation, local apps or hosted apps.  As of this writing that appears to no longer be the case.  We independently verified that this happens at least in one other lab environment that I had no part in building. So it isn't a personal process issue.

The user can of course right click the app and choose "open with" and hosted Word would be offered but that was not something we wanted to have each user go through.



What we did was to create a couple of Reg tweaks on the VDI:

Set user choice for .docx to Word

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.docx\UserChoice]
"Progid"="Dazzle.Word 2013.docx.1"



To fix .docx icon appearance

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\docxfile]
[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.docx]

At the Customer they are pushing these settings in group policy as part of the user config.  I hope this helps.

Mike-

Enabling Citrix XenApp XenDesktop (MCS) to work with Self Signed VCenter Certificates Windows 2012

During XenApp 7.x, XenDesktop 7.x  Configuration Site Configuration wizard will throw the following error, The following configuration changes will need to be made on every delivery controller in the site

This is of course Caused by the VCenter Certificate being self signed.  

This is pretty easy to fix once you have seen it.  There a couple settings that need to be tweaked.

First lets start with editing the host file

Save yourself some pain, run notepad as administrator
In the Metro Start menu start typing Notepad, when it shows up right click it and Choose "Run as Administrator"

The host file is located at:

%SystemRoot%/WINDOWS/system32/Drivers/etc/
So in notepad, choose file open and browse for it

 add a line similar to this one, it's critical that the FQDN Exactly Matches the name on Certificate that is causing the error (typically will be the name of the VCenter server)

Save and exit, if it gives you an error you didn't run notepad as an administrator

Next Up is Installing the Certificate. 

Internet Explorer needs to be ran from an elevated permissions level, I couldn't quickly figure out how to get it to "run as administrator" from the metro dashboard, and it was faster and easier just to open it from the command line for me.. if you have a better way, do it your way. Here is what I did. 

Run CMD.exe as admin (in metro tiles window, start typing cmd, when it shows cmd.exe right click on it and choose "run as administrator"

Launch IE from its location which is typically: "c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer"  iexplore.exe

Once  that is open, enter the VCenter address into Internet Explorer you get a site like this: 

Accept the error, by clicking Continue to this website (Not Recommended)  

Once the page loads, Click on the Red Part of the Address bar where it says Certificate, and click in blue at the bottom View certificates

Click install Certificate

Choose Local Machine, Hit next

Choose Place all certificates in the following store, click browse

Choose Trusted People, this is where letting it automatically selecting a store based on type of certificate fails

After that when you reload the website it should look like this:

No Warnings, or errors.

Once you are back in Site Configuration, after you put in your credentials etc.. you can continue Configuring the site

  

Hope that helps!