Monthly Archives: April 2017

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Citrix XenApp Cut-over 4/13/2017

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This notice applies to the apps.oregonstate.edu service.

New troubleshooting steps have been added to the Citrix XenApp Service InfoSheet.

On Thursday, 4/13 at 11:00AM-Noon, we will be cutting over from the College of Engineering Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop infrastructure to the Information Services infrastructure.

This is NOT an outage and should not impact any currently connected users.

With this cut-over, we will be upgrading from XenApp 6.5 to XenApp 7.12.  With this deployment; the Service Desk will gain access to two powerful tools to assist in troubleshooting customer issues when using http://apps.oregonstate.edu.  These two tools can be reached by connecting via remote desktop to nws-term4.nws.oregonstate.edu and launching them from the start menu.

Service Desk technicians have the role of “Helpdesk Administrator” scoped to “Campus Labs – Applications” and “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab”.   With these permissions you should be able to assist customers with various common tasks.

Broker: OSU-CTX-DDC-01.OREGONSTATE.EDU

Citrix Director

The Citrix Director tool is a perfect companion to XenApp for Service Desk employees.  When you log into Director you are immediately prompted about looking up either a user, machine, or endpoint.  Select User and then type in the customer that is calling in with an issue.  You will be presented with all of the details about all connections that the customer is using (there can be multiple applications, desktops, etc.) as well as the ability to restart, shadow, reset, or list the processes that my session is currently using.

 Citrix Studio

“Citrix Studio is the primary management console for administering XenApp and XenDesktop sites.  This console is used for tasks such as initial site setup, machine provisioning, and application and desktop publishing.” In your role as a Service Desk employee you won’t use this tool as often as Citrix Director but it still has important features that may be beneficial when answering questions for customers or assisting them with their support issues.

Search

The search window allows you to search for any items within the Citrix infrastructure that you have permissions to.  This includes Desktops, Servers, and Sessions currently in the system.

Delivery Groups

Delivery Groups are the set of resources (servers, desktops, applications, and users) that have been configured for a specific purpose.  Your permissions grant you the ability to see a “Campus Labs – Applications” and “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab” delivery group.  For now we can ignore the “Campus Labs – Virtual Lab”; that’s for XenDesktop that we’ll be deploying at a later date.  By clicking on the “Campus Labs – Applications” you’ll be able to see that it consists of 10 servers.  From here you can see all the details about delivery group configuration and which applications have been assigned to this delivery group.  You can also right-click on the delivery group and select “View Machines” or “View Applications” to see the resources allocated to this delivery group.

View Machines – You will see a list of the Windows 2012 R2 servers that we have configured to host the applications running on http://apps.oregonstate.edu. You can see the status of each machine (is it on, is it registered, and the number of sessions attached to it).  If a machine has sessions on it you can view the session, send a message to the customer, and log off those sessions (in the cases that the session is hung).

Note:  You also have the ability to put a server into “Maintenance Mode”. This temporarily stops new connections to a machine to perform administrative tasks (fixing problems, applying updates, etc.).  You should only do this if you are receiving calls from several users about a specific server.  You should immediately begin working with Endpoint Management to determine the cause of the errors and ensure a speedy return to service for that server.

Applications

The application section is where you can dig into the details about the applications that are deployed to XenApp (http://apps.oregonstate.edu).  You’ll be able to see items like who has access, who’s using it now, and is the application enabled (available for customers to use).

Configuration Settings:

The configuration settings won’t be much use to you as a Service Desk employee as they are site-wide and managed by the Endpoint Management team.  The Controllers section lists the servers that are configured as Citrix controllers for our environment.  We have two currently to ensure that Citrix continues to function should one of the servers experience an issue and/or to allow maintenance on one while still providing uptime.  The AppDNA and Zones sections aren’t really implemented at this time.

Citrix Universal Profile Manager

The Citrix Universal Profile manager is a tool that we are using to keep a central profile for customer interactions with Citrix.  This ensures that the customer experience between XenApp applications and XenDesktop desktops are kept synchronized.  The data stored in these profiles is not customer data; it entails the settings and preferences of the various applications and desktops in use.  This profile location is generally hidden and not visible to the customer and we’re hoping to keep the size of this profile very limited.

Profile Location: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu

Profile Naming: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username.domain\windows-os-version (e.g.: \\ctx-profiles.sig.oregonstate.edu\powern.onid\Win7v2) (versioning details).

Citrix Profile Folder Redirection

ONID customers that are logging into XenApp or XenDesktop sessions will have their standard Windows profiles redirected to \\onid-fs.onid.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username\Profile.  We are currently using folder redirection to redirect the Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and Favorites.  On the previous XenApp implementation this information was stored in \\onid-fs.onid.oregonstate.edu\profiles\username\Windows.Documents folder.  As of Spring Break 2017; customers will be pointing to the Profile directory.  If you have customers that need something stored in their old location; work with them to browse their home space and find the files (nothing has been removed).

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TeamDynamix v9.5 software update – April 15th, 2017

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What

TeamDynamix is releasing a new version (9.5) of the software on Saturday April 15th.

When

During the release, the system will be unavailable on April 15th between 12 AM and 4 AM Eastern Time. TeamDynamix expects the upgrade to take 1 hour and the maintenance window to be 4 hours.

The items that will most impact you are below.

Added – 4/15/2017

Tickets from email, assigning to a group

As part of the 9.5 change, tickets from e-mail now require an automation rule to be assigned to the appropriate group.

Each ticket from e-mail will have an entry like the following.

“Changed Responsibility from “” to “Service Desk” as a result of applying the “service.desk@.o.e – e-mail to group assignment” rule.”

V9.5 Ticket Creation Process

With the new version, “form” replaces the “ticket type” selection. Select the “form” like you would have selected “ticket type”.

Eventually, forms will be configured to have “cascading/conditional” settings to help with easier ticket creation.

Step 1:  From the “+ New” menu select the correct  Incident, Problem, Change, Service Request or Release Form.

Step 2: Fill in the form but if at any time you determine that another request form is more appropriate use the type-ahead Form Selector to easily change the form without losing the data you’ve already entered.

Step 3:  Fill in the form, you may still apply a template, and save the request.

Specific forms can be pinned to the “New” button to allow quicker ticket creation for tickets that are created often.

“+New” Menu Changes – in a ticketing application – IT, Forestry IT, ROOTs IT, InfoSec Office, etc.

1. The “+New” creation menu has been simplified and shortcuts to commonly used ticket forms can be added.

2. Less commonly used setup items have been moved to the Gear menu.

A “form selection” will be at the top of the ticket creation window.

Ticket processing

  1. The previously assigned ticket responsibility gets added to the feed when responsibility changes.
  2. Native ability to open multiple tickets, and ticket creation windows at the same time.
  3. Ticket description and task description limits have been removed.
  4. Template field is now a type ahead.

Ticket reports

“Starts with” and “Ends with” filter options have been added to text based fields.

Knowledgebase

  1. Revision tracking for Knowledge Base articles
  2. Allow comments/feed on KB articles

Release notes/links

View the release notes (PDF )- TDx – 9.5 release notes

Release notes on TD site (requires TD community site) – https://solutions.teamdynamix.com/TDClient/KB/ArticleDet?ID=22797

TDx 9.5 webinar (1 hour long) – https://youtu.be/hBYypRHx-cM

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Google Talk going away

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The Google Talk service will be turned off on June 26, 2017.

As of March 2017, about 40 OSU users were still using this service. These users will be notified on 4/10/2017 via email that the service is going away, and will be told to contact the Service Desk for assistance.

Users may switch to Google Hangouts or another chat service.

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Service Desk Digest 4/5/2017

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Students: Check your WhenToWork preferences

We have had several people miss shifts already this week due to scheduling conflicts. Please check your WhenToWork preferences carefully to ensure you are not set as available to work during a scheduled class.

Remember: it is your responsibility to ensure your WhenToWork settings are correct.

Citrix XenApp update next week

The Citrix XenApp environment will be upgraded and cut-over next week from College of Engineering’s infrastructure to IS’ infrastructure. With this change, we will gain access to some very useful troubleshooting tools. Information will be added to the Citrix InfoSheet shortly.

OSU-Cascades IT phone number

Telecom let me know that the phone menu for the old OSU-Cascades IT number (22051) had been wiped somehow. Customers calling that number heard dead air and were not able to get through to the call center.
This number used to be on a sticker on all OSU-Cascades computers, but no longer is. We started phasing it out about a year ago in favor of the main number (78787).
Fortunately, I still had a copy of the script, so Telecom re-recorded it for us. I have asked that they reprogram it to redirect directly to 78787 and that may be happening next week.

Sierra and ScreenConnect

Call center techs are seeing frequent but intermittent issues with ScreenConnect misbehaving on Sierra machines, making remote control almost impossible in many cases.

We may be able to resolve this with a change to ScreenConnect, or with a different tool. Will keep you all posted.

Floor in front of Milne 201

We had a bit of a surprise this week with the floor being torn up in front of Milne 201 without any notice. Angela is in conversation with Facilities about when the reinstall will happen, and trying to negotiate it for a time the walkup is not open. If the install ends up producing a lot of fumes, we can close the walkup door temporarily. My apologies for the unintended excitement.

 

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NOC moving into TD

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The NOC (aka Network Engineering) team are moving into TeamDynamix today for all ticketing.

NOC will not be taking requests via email anymore. DCAs should submit requests via the web form here: http://is.oregonstate.edu/net/webform/dcait-pro-contact-noc

If a DCA calls the Service Desk with a request for NOC, we can make a ticket by using one of the TD templates for “DCA/IT Pro Contact NOC”. The ticket will automatically be assigned to the “Network Operations (NOC)” group.

For tickets from end-users that need to be escalated to NOC, please leave responsible assigned to the Service Desk or a Service Desk technician, and create a task assigned to “Network Operations (NOC)”. The Service Desk are tier 1 for NOC.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Note: this information will be added to the ticket processing section of the Service Desk process guide in ITKnows soon.