Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

Advanced policy settings

Number of retries when accessing locked files

Sets the number of retries when accessing locked files.

If this policy is disabled, the default value of five retries is used. If this policy is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used. If this policy is not configured here or in the .ini file, the default value is used.

Some deployments leave extra Internet cookies that are not referenced by the file Index.dat. The extra cookies left in the file system after sustained browsing can lead to profile bloat. Enable this policy to force processing of Index.dat and remove the extra cookies. The policy increases logoff times, so only enable it if you experience this issue.

If this policy is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used. If this policy is not configured here or in the .ini file, no processing of Index.dat takes place.

Disable automatic configuration

Profile Management examines any Citrix Virtual Desktops environment, for example for the presence of personal vDisks, and configures Group Policy accordingly. Only Profile Management policies in the Not Configured state are adjusted, so any customizations you have made are preserved. This feature speeds up deployment and simplifies optimization. No configuration of the feature is necessary, but you can disable automatic configuration when upgrading (to retain settings from earlier versions) or when troubleshooting. Automatic configuration does not work in Citrix Virtual Apps or other environments.

You can regard automatic configuration as a dynamic configuration checker that automatically configures the default policy settings according to environments at runtime. It eliminates the need to configure the settings manually. Runtime environments include:

  • Windows OS
  • Windows OS versions
  • Presence of Citrix Virtual Desktops
  • Presence of personal vDisks

Automatic configuration might change the following policies if the environment changes:

  • Active write back
  • Always cache
  • Delete locally cached profiles on logoff
  • Delay before deleting cached profiles
  • Profile streaming

See the following table for the default status of the policies on different OSs:

  Multi-session OS Single-session OS
Active write back Enabled Disabled if Personal vDisk is in use; otherwise, enabled.
Always cache Disabled Disabled if Personal vDisk is in use; otherwise, enabled.
Delete locally cached profiles on logoff Enabled Disabled if Personal vDisk is in use or if Citrix Virtual Desktops is assigned or if Citrix Virtual Desktops is not installed; otherwise, enabled.
Delay before deleting cached profiles 0 seconds 60 seconds if user changes are not persistent; otherwise, 0 seconds.
Profile streaming Enabled Disabled if Personal vDisk is in use; otherwise, enabled.

However, with automatic configuration disabled, all policies above default to Disabled.

Important:

Personal vDisk is deprecated. For details, see Remove PVD, AppDisks, and unsupported hosts.

Starting with Profile Management 1909, you can have an improved experience with the Start menu on Windows 10 (version 1607 and later) and Windows Server 2016 and later. This improvement is achieved through automatic configuration of the following policies:

  • Add “Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Caches” and “Appdata\Local\Packages” to “Folders to Mirror”
  • Add “Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows\UsrClass.Dat*” to “Files to synchronize”

If this setting is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used.

If this setting is not configured here or in the .ini file, automatic configuration is turned on so Profile Management settings might change if the environment changes.

Log off user if a problem is encountered

If this policy is disabled or not configured, users are given a temporary profile if a problem is encountered (for example, the user store is unavailable). If it is enabled, an error message is displayed and users are logged off. This setup can simplify troubleshooting of the problem.

If this setting is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used.

If this setting is not configured here or in the .ini file, a temporary profile is provided.

Customer Experience Improvement Program

By default, the Customer Experience Improvement Program is enabled to help improve the quality and performance of Citrix products by sending anonymous statistics and usage information.

If this setting is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used.

Enable search index roaming for Outlook

Allow user-based Outlook search experience by automatically roaming Outlook search data along with user profile. This requires extra spaces in the user store to store search index for Outlook.

You must log off and then log on again for this policy to take effect.

Outlook search index database – backup and restore

This setting configures what Profile Management does during logon when the Enable search index roaming for Outlook is enabled.

If this setting is enabled, Profile Management saves a backup of the search index database each time the database is mounted successfully on logon. Profile Management treats the backup as the good copy of the search index database. When an attempt to mount the search index database fails because the database becomes corrupted, Profile Management automatically reverts the search index database to the last known good copy.

Note:

Profile Management deletes the previously saved backup after a new backup is saved successfully. The backup consumes the available storage space of the VHDX files.

Enable multi-session write-back for profile containers

Enables write-back for profile containers in multi-session scenarios. If enabled, changes in all sessions are written back to profile containers. Otherwise, only changes in the first session are saved because only the first session is in read/write mode in profile containers. Citrix Profile Management profile containers are supported starting with Citrix Profile Management 2103. FSLogix Profile Container is supported starting with Citrix Profile Management 2003.

To use this policy for FSLogix Profile Container, ensure that the following prerequisites are met:

  • The FSLogix Profile Container feature is installed and enabled.
  • The profile type is set to Try for read-write profile and fallback to read-only in FSLogix.

Replicate user stores

Lets you replicate a user store to multiple paths upon each logon and logoff - in addition to the path that the Path to user store policy specifies. To synchronize to the user stores files and folders modified during a session, enable active write back. This feature does not currently support full container solutions. Enabling the policy can increase system I/O and might prolong logoffs.

Enable credential-based access to user stores

By default, Citrix Profile Management impersonates the current user to access user stores. Therefore, it requires the current user to have permission to directly access the user stores. Enable this feature if you do not want Profile Management to impersonate the current user when accessing user stores. You can put user stores in storage repositories (for example, Azure Files) that the current user has no permission to access.

To ensure that Profile Management can access user stores, save the profile storage server’s credentials in Workspace Environment Management (WEM) or Windows Credential Manager. We recommend that you use Workspace Environment Management to eliminate the need of configuring the same credentials for each machine where Profile Management runs. If you use Windows Credential Manager, use the Local System account to securely save the credentials.

Note:

To ensure that NTFS permissions are retained, you must put the entire profile in a profile container.

If this setting is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used. If this setting is configured neither here nor in the .ini file, it is disabled by default.