Sneak Peek: Mobile XenApp management application for iPhone
I wanted to take a few minutes to give a sneak peak of something I am working on and am pretty excited about. With the release of the Citrix Receiver client for the iPhone I started thinking of ways to make the mobile format useful for administration purposes. I had a general idea in my head and when I saw ‘Doc Finder’ it became the inspiration for how to implement it.
Keep in mind that this is a very early concept version but I wanted to get a preview of it out there so that I can incorporate any feedback into the app itself. I am looking for the most common XenApp admin tasks that would need to be accomplished quickly and easily when away from the office. Let’s face it, most of us would never use a mobile device for full farm administration as it is far too cumbersome. This is why I am gearing this towards completing tasks that a Citrix admin would usually need to complete when say, at lunch. How many times have we, as admins, been called while at lunch with reports of a server flaking out and are powerless to do anything about it? That’s why I think this will be a huge plus in those corporations that will allow the use of the iPhone.
Take a look at a quick preview here. The video was recorded while shadowing a session on an iPod Touch running the app.
I would love to hear any initial feedback and/or suggestions. Eventually I plan to expand this to allow administration of XenServer and Netscaler (Hooray for VPX).
What about “Test ICA” as well (either via telnet or some other method). Another helpful tool would be the ability for remotely resetting the IMA service on a server.
I would love to be able to change the load-evaulator. (Use that to disable logons. That way admin’s can still login to a failing server.)
Another thing would be to view the server load-values and least loaded server.
And finaly, if it’s possible to get a reasonable gui on the iPhone, a feature to logout/reset individual users.
Keep up the good work, will absolutely use the app!
@Markus
Thanks for taking the time to comment Markus!
You are in luck because ALL of that is planned, in a sense!
I just typed up an insane amount of text about my current plans but thought I would actually make a post about it instead of leaving it here in the comments
Nick, it looks like you are optimizing for the iPhone at 480×320. You may also want to provide the option to expand the screen so it also looks good on other devices, like the HTC Touch Pro that runs at 640×480.
@Chris Fleck
Chris,
Agreed. The plan at the moment is to focus on one platform screen size with future sizes integrated. I want this app to be able to be published with a simple switch, mobileapp.exe -iPhone or mobileapp.exe -htcTouch
@Nick
To add to that I know the citrix receiver assigns a specific client name so that can be used to adjust the size automatically. A few options are on the table.