One of the common questions that come is what options exist for presenting Droplet containerized apps in platforms like Citrix Virtual Apps. I have a bit of pedigree with Citrix – before pivoting to VMware in the 2003/4 era, my main role was as Citrix Certified Instructor (CCI) delivering their official curriculum – I started with Citrix MetaFrame 1.8 on the NT4 TSE platform. So, there is a number of ways that you can make Droplet containerized apps available these include:
- Full Application in Desktop
- Full Application as a published app
- Individual apps within the container
This guide handles that last one. The goal is to be able to present just a single application or .exe within the context of the container – so it advertised in the StoreFront like so:
So here I’m publishing the core droplet.exe and also a copy of Excel 2003 and Notepad within the container. Let’s have a look at the Excel 2003 example.
In the Citrix Studio we can use the Application node to make new definitions:
When adding the droplet.exe – you can change the icon by providing a .ico file:
We can modify the “Location” add additional command-line arguments – in our case “launch winword.exe –minimised”
This syntax instructs droplet.exe to start Microsoft Word and to launch the droplet.exe in a minimized mode if it’s not already started. The result is Microsoft Word launches, and droplet.exe is “hidden” in the Windows System Tray.
This is advertised in the StoreFront like so:
There’s a couple of other recommendations I would make if you’re opting to use a third-party-based publishing system to serve up Droplet containerized apps…
Firstly, you don’t need our publishing front-end called “Application Tiles” in this environment. You could if you so wished “mirror” the configuration in Citrix StoreFront in the Droplet client. Alternatively, you could remove all the “Application Tiles” – if you also disable our FileShare feature this makes the client, very much like an agent sitting in the system tray waiting for Droplet containerized applications to be launched from the Droplet Windows Service:
This configuration is not uncommon in environments where organizations have a method of controlling access applications which they have been using for some time, and prefer to create shortcuts to Droplet containerized apps in the standard way using:
droplet.exe launch “excel.exe”
Secondly, in our new release, we will be supporting the settings.json option called:
“hideSettingsMenu”: false
This has the effect of suppressing the “gears” icon in the UI which makes the UI a little bit neater.
