Citrix Applications (XenApp) and Citrix Desktop (XenDesktop) provide a significant advantage for the management of organizations’ IT infrastructure by providing control and access for multiple users connecting to applications or session-based desktops on a shared Remote Desktop Services server. Features of Citrix XenApp include:
Bentley Systems does permit the use of Desktop products in Citrix, but some care does need to be taken to ensure that the organization remains in compliance with Bentley Systems’ Terms of Use. It is the responsibility of the organization using the Bentley product to ensure that Citrix environments are configured and used in a manner that is compliant.
To stay in compliance with the Terms of Use, please keep the following things in mind:
Citrix requires a stable connection to continue to use a virtualized application. For Bentley licensing, a stable network connection to Bentley’s Cloud services is required to properly entitle and record usage of an application.
CONNECTION Client 11.00.01.109 is the minimum version that needs to be installed to properly comply with the Terms of Use. This version has important changes especially for logging of application usage in the virtual environment. To learn more about this change, please see How Remote Usage Is Recorded
Important fixes to the CONNECTION Client and Licensing client are released regularly. It is important to stay current with these releases as they may have fixes that relate directly to use of Bentley products in virtual environments such as Citrix.
Please see the CONNECTION Client Release Notes for more information about these important fixes.
Citrix offers several options to manage credentials to access their environments. Some, such as Active Directory, naturally help maintain user security. Other options may allow more sharing of credentials among users, but that should be avoided.
Citrix has recommendations for how to discourage or stop users from using the same ID.
Citrix has many controls to allow for the management of sessions to achieve different behaviors. Some of those controls can extend the duration of a session beyond when the application is actually visible to a user. This could lead to longer than expected durations of usage.
This includes when the network connection to the Citrix environment is severed. As the application session may continue to run even if a user is not connected, usage will continue to be logged against that active session.
To understand how usage is going to be looked in this environment, please see How remote usage is recorded.