- Microsoft Teams And Citrix
- Teams Over Citrix
- Teams In Citrix Desktop
- Microsoft Teams Vdi Citrix
- Microsoft Teams Citrix Xenapp
- Install Microsoft Teams Citrix Xenapp
Introducing HDX optimization for Microsoft Teams. Now organizations can centrally deploy Microsoft Teams within their virtual environments and deliver a full.
How I tricked the HdxBrowserCef.exe (Chrome Browser) process into presenting itself as an Edge Browser enabling the best of both worlds.
In this article. As of March 2020, Citrix has announced deprecation and end-of-support for public cloud hosted workloads. Therefore, we do not recommend using Site Recovery for protecting Citrix workloads. Microsoft Teams The standard installation, that the user can perform through the Office365 portal, is a user-based installation. In a Citrix environment, this is only recommended for desktop operating systems (pooled or personal desktop). Mickderksen Citrix, Microsoft, XenApp In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to disable GPU Hardware Acceleration for Teams in Citrix for all users. If the Virtual Desktop does not have a GPU/vGPU, Citrix recommends to disable GPU hardware acceleration in Teams (link).
This is a guest post, written by Dennis Smith.
We needed to be able to make a Microsoft Teams video call via our VDI. But since the Citrix HDX optimization for Microsoft Teams is still not released, my chances of getting it to work were slim to say the least. But I’m one of those people who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
The situation
Our organization uses, like many production environments do, the Citrix Virtual Workspace 7.15 LTSR CU3. We host a VDI and make the VM’s available via a Netscaler.
Microsoft Teams And Citrix
We thought, maybe we can get it to work usingthe browser (teams.microsoft.com) and Citrix ‘Browser Content Redirection 2.0’,using Fernando Klurfan’s guide here;
We had set up the environment and contentredirection with YouTube worked.
Under the hood
A close inspection on how this system really works was needed to find a solution to our problem. Just like flash redirection a few years ago, I know that the URL that has to be displayed is passed on via the ICA client, ahhum, sorry, I mean the Workspace App, of course.
On the client side, Citrix uses theHdxBrowserCef.exe to render the pages locally.
Teams Over Citrix
This immediately raised some questions, whatdoes CEF stand for?
After setting the necessary policies/reg keysto enable redirection, as shown below;
And installing the Chrome extension;
We were able to successfully run teams locally, and everything worked…
Teams In Citrix Desktop
Except video calling.
No video calling using Chrome, no Browser redirection using Edge
It seems that browser video calling is notpossible using Chrome, I don’t know why, because technically it’s not an issue,at all. I know that Microsoft Teams in-browser video conferencing on Edgeworks. Must be a political thing. Apparently, on the server side Microsoftchecks what browser you’re using and only allows Edge browsers to do videoconferencing. However, the issue remains, Edge does not support browserredirection.
After some tests, I found that Chrome could befooled into presenting itself as if it was Edge by setting the User Agent to aEdge identifier. Using shift-control i,and select, network conditions, User agent;
Now if I could only fool the local browser inpresenting itself with a Edge user agent. The local browser is in this case isthe ‘HdxBrowserCef.exe’, it comes with the Citrix Workspace App (Receiver).
Further inspection on the HdxBrowserCef.exerevealed that it uses the open source lib called Chromium Embedded Framework(CEF). It does not use the local Google Chrome. Now we know what CEF stands forin HdxBrowserCef.exe.
The question is, is it possible for CEF tochange the user agent, and does CEF support webcam access?
Yes, it is, and here’s how!
and;
(source https://ourcodeworld.com/articles/read/425/how-to-enable-webrtc-access-camera-and-microphone-for-cefsharp-in-winforms)
But to re-write the whole HdxBrowserCef.exe isa bridge too far, we only needed it to present itself as Edge.
I started searching for User Agent strings in the Citrix Workspace App folder that holds the HdxBrowserCef.exe. And found it in the ‘libcef.dll’. We dove into the file using a hex editor (https://hexed.it/), searched for ‘mozilla’, because that’s in all User Agent strings;
Changed this into;
Adding an Edge user string to the User Agentstring. Saved the .dll, and tested this using www.whatismybrowser.comto see if we successfully fooled the HdxBrowserCef.exe into presenting itselfas Edge. And it worked! Notice that strings are stored using &h00 as ‘endof string’, and &h20 as ‘space’.
The next test was, will in-browser Teams videocalling work?, the icon was there so it looked promising.
After a few video calls, I concluded thiswork-around works. Please keep in mind that using this setup every redirectedweb-page, including youtube, will be requested as Edge.
Dennis Smith – Gourami.eu
Disclaimer: this article is intended as atechnical proof of concept. We do not recommend doing this yourself.
How I tricked the HdxBrowserCef.exe (Chrome Browser) process into presenting itself as an Edge Browser enabling the best of both worlds.
This is a guest post, written by Dennis Smith.
We needed to be able to make a Microsoft Teams video call via our VDI. But since the Citrix HDX optimization for Microsoft Teams is still not released, my chances of getting it to work were slim to say the least. But I’m one of those people who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
The situation
Our organization uses, like many production environments do, the Citrix Virtual Workspace 7.15 LTSR CU3. We host a VDI and make the VM’s available via a Netscaler.
We thought, maybe we can get it to work usingthe browser (teams.microsoft.com) and Citrix ‘Browser Content Redirection 2.0’,using Fernando Klurfan’s guide here;
We had set up the environment and contentredirection with YouTube worked.
Under the hood
A close inspection on how this system really works was needed to find a solution to our problem. Just like flash redirection a few years ago, I know that the URL that has to be displayed is passed on via the ICA client, ahhum, sorry, I mean the Workspace App, of course.
On the client side, Citrix uses theHdxBrowserCef.exe to render the pages locally.
This immediately raised some questions, whatdoes CEF stand for?
After setting the necessary policies/reg keysto enable redirection, as shown below;
And installing the Chrome extension;
We were able to successfully run teams locally, and everything worked…
Except video calling.
No video calling using Chrome, no Browser redirection using Edge
It seems that browser video calling is notpossible using Chrome, I don’t know why, because technically it’s not an issue,at all. I know that Microsoft Teams in-browser video conferencing on Edgeworks. Must be a political thing. Apparently, on the server side Microsoftchecks what browser you’re using and only allows Edge browsers to do videoconferencing. However, the issue remains, Edge does not support browserredirection.
After some tests, I found that Chrome could befooled into presenting itself as if it was Edge by setting the User Agent to aEdge identifier. Using shift-control i,and select, network conditions, User agent;
Now if I could only fool the local browser inpresenting itself with a Edge user agent. The local browser is in this case isthe ‘HdxBrowserCef.exe’, it comes with the Citrix Workspace App (Receiver).
Further inspection on the HdxBrowserCef.exerevealed that it uses the open source lib called Chromium Embedded Framework(CEF). It does not use the local Google Chrome. Now we know what CEF stands forin HdxBrowserCef.exe.
The question is, is it possible for CEF tochange the user agent, and does CEF support webcam access?
Microsoft Teams Vdi Citrix
Yes, it is, and here’s how!
and;
(source https://ourcodeworld.com/articles/read/425/how-to-enable-webrtc-access-camera-and-microphone-for-cefsharp-in-winforms)
But to re-write the whole HdxBrowserCef.exe isa bridge too far, we only needed it to present itself as Edge.
I started searching for User Agent strings in the Citrix Workspace App folder that holds the HdxBrowserCef.exe. And found it in the ‘libcef.dll’. We dove into the file using a hex editor (https://hexed.it/), searched for ‘mozilla’, because that’s in all User Agent strings;
Changed this into;
Adding an Edge user string to the User Agentstring. Saved the .dll, and tested this using www.whatismybrowser.comto see if we successfully fooled the HdxBrowserCef.exe into presenting itselfas Edge. And it worked! Notice that strings are stored using &h00 as ‘endof string’, and &h20 as ‘space’.
Microsoft Teams Citrix Xenapp
The next test was, will in-browser Teams videocalling work?, the icon was there so it looked promising.
After a few video calls, I concluded thiswork-around works. Please keep in mind that using this setup every redirectedweb-page, including youtube, will be requested as Edge.
Install Microsoft Teams Citrix Xenapp
Dennis Smith – Gourami.eu
Disclaimer: this article is intended as atechnical proof of concept. We do not recommend doing this yourself.