Citrix integration

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Applications presented in a Citrix Virtual Desktop Environment (VDE) can be natively automated using Blue Prism. Users who are able to install Blue Prism directly into the Citrix VDE can take advantage of native spying techniques in addition to the previously available surface automation approach.

Prerequisites

The following prerequisites must be met before setting up Citrix automation:

  • Blue Prism 7.1 must be installed on the user's local machine.
  • The Citrix Workspace application must be installed on each runtime resource that will automate the Citrix VDE natively and on each interactive client used to build these processes.
  • Ability to install the Blue Prism agent on the Citrix VDE for the profile of the user account used to log into the VDE.

Setup overview

Blue Prism communicates with the Citrix VDE using the virtual channel driver which forwards the data over an Independent Computing Architecture (ICA) channel. The data is received by the Blue Prism AppMan.Service.exe and is forwarded to the Blue Prism Application Manager via internal communication.

Citrix integration overview

If virtual channel security is enabled in your Citrix policy, the opening of the virtual channel to the Blue Prism Application Manager may fail. To resolve this issue, add an entry to the Citrix policy allow list.

The entry will vary depending on where Blue Prism is installed and whether it is a 32-bit or 64-bit installation.

  • 64-bit: BPAPMAN,C:\Program Files\Blue Prism Limited\Blue Prism Automate\AppMan.Service.exe
  • 32-bit: BPAPMAN,C:\Program Files (x86)\Blue Prism Limited\Blue Prism Automate\AppMan.Service.exe

For more information, see Virtual channel security in the Citrix product documentation.

The following steps must be completed to automate applications via a Citrix VDE:

  1. Install Blue Prism on the Citrix VDE.
  2. Install Blue Prism on the required interactive clients and runtime resources.
  3. Automate applications via a Citrix VDE.

Limitations

The following are current limitations when connecting a runtime resource to a Citrix VDE:

  • Only one Citrix VDE can be automated from a single Blue Prism runtime resource.
  • Only one runtime resource can be connected to one Citrix VDE.