Everyone knows a Smartphone is a Cell Phone + PDA. A ” nirvana phone ” is a smartphone + video connection to a full size display + full size keyboard, Plus access to a Virtual Desktop. With a “nirvana phone” you finally get your leave your laptop home !
Citrix and partner OK Labs are collaborating to utilize the OK Labs Microvisor plus the Citrix Receiver in a secure mobile VM. This solution will enable a new generation of smartphones to provide “nirvana phone” functionality. In addition, Citrix and OK Labs are providing a concept specification for device builders to follow to assure the best “nirvana phone” function and experience.  
Learn more about the “nirvana phone” and the Citrix – OK Labs collaboration at a free Webinar on 2/7/2010. View Online
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10 . You won’t get fired for leaving your iPhone in a cab revealing company secrets.

9. You won’t miss another meeting with your boss because the iPhone calendar app didn’t sync right with your Exchange server.

8. Speed read through your email with just a swipe.

7. Open large attachments in seconds without crashing the email app.

6. Edit attachments and view features like Word Track Changes.

5. Click on Intranet / SharePoint site links, and they work !

4. Easily find; Sent, Deleted, Saved, emails just like Outlook on your PC.

3. You can finally convince your IT/Security guys that there is a safe way to support the iPhone.

2. You won’t need to carry around both your iPhone because you want to, Plus your Blackberry because you need to.

And the Number 1 reason ?

1. Just because you can ( with Citrix Receiver ) … and win the next “my app beats your app” debate with your friends

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http://twitter.com/chrisfleck

In our first part of this series, we talked about publishing apps at the right resolution… something that doesn’t really require any custom development. All it requires is a little thought and observation about an app in general. In part 2 we talked about publishing apps as tasks to basically turn receiver into a list of tasks that represent the way your users work. Now, we’ll take that a step further and talk about some useful apps you may want to publish. There are many more, I am sure, and if you have some you would like to add, please comment on this post. I’ve just added the top 5 here.

Optimize Configuration by publishing useful apps

As I stated in the previous post, the last thing you want to do is make available applications that aren’t really usable on small form factors just for the sake of saying, “I did it” (Don’t laugh, I’ve seen this practice myself).

To start off your implementation and help ensure early user adoption and support, here is a short list of useful applications you might want to publish. Don’t forget that session resolution, as discussed in the previous post, can help with the user experience.

• Microsoft Powerpoint and Powerpoint Viewer – I love PowerPoint and PowerPoint Viewer on mobile devices. The reason is because it’s a great helper app. I have an iPhone and most smartphones have built-in readers for office. The problem is that they don;t preserve the animations. They also don;t parse data very well so complex presentations with lots of graphics and animation can come out all garbled. For these, I use Microsoft Powerpoint. If I need to get a review on a Powerpoint done quickly or if I’m on my way to a meeting and want to practice my presentation, I can open a PPT up on my iphone and work away. I can even practice and record timings. I would publish this app at 640×480 or 960×640 (landscape) if you are working with phones that have a built-in accelerometer and automatically flip to landscape when the users turns the phone in it’s side. Users will want to naturally flip it on it’s side anyway. Publishing at this resolution gives users the ability to navigate using a 4 quadrant display while at the same time being able to easily zoom out to view a PPT in slideshow mode. You’ll want to try a variety of configurations depending on the mobile devices you need to support. Publish this app as “Edit a presentation” or “View a presentation”. Publish Powerpoint Viewer or Powerpoint with the /s command line option to open in slideshow view only. Publish this task as “View a presentation”.

• Citrix GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting – In conjunction with Microsoft PowerPoint, this is a killer app for anyone on the road. If you don’t have a laptop connection and are in a pinch to watch a webinar, you can do it via GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar on XenApp. It’s even handy for hosting small meetings using a hosted session running PowerPoint. It’s great for participating in meetings if you’re broken down somewhere or at the beach enjoying a lazy day when the board of directors decides to have an emergency call. I’d publish this app at 640×480 or 960×960 to make it easy for users hosting a conference to use the toolbar. If you want to see this in action yourself, get a demo account at CitrixCloud.net and connect with your mobile device. Publish this app as “Join a Webinar”. In fact, even if your organization doesn’t support this yet but you have a GotoWebinar (like a Citrix TechTalk) or a GotoMeeting to attend, you can use CitrixCloud.net and published GotoWebinar to participate. I’ve done this myself for morning meetings from 8-9. I have a suction stand and stereo jack that lets me mount my iPhone on my windshield and plug the sound into my car stereo. I can be on the con-call and at red lights (of course I’m safe ) I’ll glance over and see what’s going on in the presentation. Very nifty tool. Especially if you’re running late or if you need to multi-task without your laptop.

• Microsoft Outlook – I know you’re probably thinking “how could this app possibly be on this list when smartphones can already access e-mail”. Well, guess what? Not all organizations allow mobile e-mail. In fact they don’t trust mobile devices at all due to the fact that e-mail is cached and if the device is lost this can pose a security risk. Even in any organization there are always a handful of users that are involved in mergers and acquisitions or have access to sensitive information. These users can’t even have Camera’s on their phones. You might want to provide them with access to Microsoft Outlook from XenApp which could serve as a more secure option for you. It’s also useful for use with GoToWebinar, GoToMeeting and PowerPoint if you have meetings scheduled in your calendar (makes webinars easier to start from published Outlook). It’s also useful if you have to review that PowerPoint you got in e-mail but your local viewer isn’t cutting it. Open Microsoft Outlook, search for your e-mail with attachment and open it from there. Check out the first blog post in this series for more specific direction on Microsoft Outlook. Publish this app as “Access e-mail”.

• Doc Finder – Doc Finder is a feature of Citrix Receiver for Mobile Devices. Doc Finder is kind of like Windows Explorer built for small form factors. This is super useful for users with lots of centralized data. Just think about it… There are two ways to open a file… using explorer or using an applications File…Open… menu. For small form factor devices, both of these methods are frustrating, requiring panning, zooming, tapping, moving, panning, zooming, etc. The easiest thing is to open Doc Finder, find your doc using simple taps and an interface that actually works on the device you’re using. You’ll want to publish Doc Finder at 640×480 to enable users to work with the apps that will open when they find their file (i.e. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.). Publish this app as “Find & open files”. If you decide not to make it available in this manner, then you might want to publish it at 320×480. Isolate the application on a virtual XenApp server and use in conjunction with file type association. This way, when the user opens a file, it will open Microsoft PowerPoint in a separate session which can be configured at a higher resolution (640×480). Don’t worry, this scenario only uses one license.

• App Viewer – Probably one of my favorite utilities is App Viewer, another feature of Citrix Receiver for Mobile Devices. App Viewer is a web browser with no user controls. It’s great for maximizing usable area for web apps. So, if you see the graphics below, one shows the experience of publishing a flash-based app running in Internet Explorer. The other is the same app using App Viewer. This app is so useful for custom apps or even your own web apps if you decide not to do any customization (More on customization later in the series). Publish this app as the task enabled by the web app is it delivering access to.

So check these apps out for starters and visit CitrixCloud.net for more ideas. Keep your eye on Adam Morano and Ray Yang for more in this area. They are our Guru’s here.

Other blog posts in this series:

• Part 1: Session resolution by Vinny Sosa
• Part 2: Publish Tasks by Vinny Sosa
• Part 3: Make your app mobile friendly by Chris Fleck

See best practices in action at CitrixCloud.net

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It’s been pretty clear that 2009 has been a great year for mobility here at Citrix. First we announced Receiver for iPhone. Then we announced an updated Receiver for Windows Mobile. Most recently we announced a tech preview for Receiver for Android and plans to release a tech preview for Receiver for Blackberry. All exciting to say the least. Through it all though, I always seem to get the same questions and comments…

• “Why access desktop apps from a phone?”
• “It’s great but it’s not something I would use all the time.”
• “Great but this is not for everyday use, right?”
• “Cool app but I can’t use it unless I do custom development of my own.”

These questions and comments basically tell me that the community needs a better understanding of how to get the most value out of Mobile access to XenApp hosted apps.

Folks, these Receivers are highly valuable to your business and they don’t require a lot to get going. What’s more you can provide a great access experience with very little effort. In this series, we’ll explore some of the best practices for getting the most out of Receiver for Mobile Devices whether you want a quick fix or you’re willing to put some effort into it and really get your hands dirty. Hopefully I can elicit a response from Adam Marano, my personal hero in this area. The way I see it, these best practices fall into three categories – optimizing configuration, presenting key data, and skinning your apps. Below is lesson #1.

Optimizing configuration by publishing apps at the right resolution

The last thing you want to do when implementing access to XenApp hosted applications from mobile devices is go into it thinking that you’re going to get the same experience as on a desktop. You just can’t shoe horn your Windows desktop apps into a 320×480 form factor and expect to have the same experience. But all is not lost. The first step is to assess the situation.

Publish the application you want to deliver from XenApp. Depending on your target devices, the resolution and aspect ratio will vary. Normally you’re looking at a 2×3 ratio or there-abouts. Publish your app in 320×480 resolution and see how the application looks (this is easily done by modifying the application properties or by using the publish application wizard).

Does it re-factor or does it seem easy to navigate within that space? Some apps do this naturally even though they were never intended for small form factors. An example of this is the Microsoft Office Suite. Don’t believe me? See for yourself by opening Excel 2007 and shrinking the window. Notice how the ribbon disappears as you approach smaller width. This is a natural optimization for small screens.

If the application looks good at 320×480, you’re set. If not, try publishing it in various resolutions that are in multiples of 320×480. So for example, try to widen the session by making it 640×480. Or make it double height at 320×960 for apps that look better longer. You can even try 640×960 for double height and double width. In the example below, I’ve made a 3 panel view (960×480) for Microsoft Outlook. You could do the same with any application. In the case below, if the user pan across the session, they can position the viewable area on top of three distinct views – e-mail list, e-mail reader, and datebook/event list.

The point of this exercise is to eliminate or reduce the need for the user to have to Pan and Zoom to see a complete app work area. It’s hard enough navigating the app without also having to navigate the screen.

Stay tuned for more in my next post in this series – “Publishing Tasks“

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In our first post in this series we talked about publishing apps at the right resolution. Here, we’ll talk a little more about an application publishing concept called publishing tasks.

Optimizing Configuration by publishing tasks

In the mobile world, users perform tasks. Just think about it… every app is designed to perform a single task very well on a small form factor. The most important thing you can do when providing access for mobile users is to understand the tasks your users perform when they work with your applications and then break applications down into specific tasks wherever possible. Doing so will save users time and make navigation easier. An easy example is Microsoft PowerPoint. With this app, a user can either edit a PPT or view a slideshow. You can publish Powerpoint,exe and call the published app “Edit a presentation”. That is fine for users who want to edit a PPT file on their mobile device (however impractical that use case may be). But, if users want to simply view files in slideshow, you could save them some panning, zooming and a couple of taps if you publish PowerPoint Viewer (the program specifically made to view slideshows). In this case, you might call it “View a presentation”. These are two distinct tasks that a user would want to perform and for which you can tailor the application session.

TIP Citrix Receiver even has built-in short cuts to help users work with with PowerPoint like a slideshow button on the keyboard to enter and exit slideshow easily, a tab button to move between objects on a slide in edit mode, as well as the general copy, cut, paste and save shortcuts.

A more sophisticated and real-world example might be a Healthcare application used in a hospital. In this case perhaps you take a user like a nurse. That nurse might be giving medication or taking vital stats or simply entering notes. If you can publish direct access to those tasks by using a command line parameter then you should do so. For example, if the app is a web app, then publish App Viewer or Internet Explorer with the URL to a specific page as a command line parameter. If you can do this, it will save clicks, pans and zooms and make the application at least more bearable for use in a pinch.

TIP Many apps have command line parameters that can help. Google or Bing the application executable or check the vendor’s admin guide to see if there are any that might be useful for publishing apps in a specific resolution, in a different mode or even to get to a specific screen upon opening.

Make the Receiver yours

The Receiver isn’t just client software for accessing applications. It helps you organize applications in a way that makes sense to your organization. However, with Receiver for Mobile devices, you can take that concept to a new level. For example, a traditional XenApp admin may use a folder structure that organizes apps by package as follows:

• Microsoft Office 2007
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2007
  • Microsoft Excel 2007
  • Microsoft Word 2007
  • Microsoft Outlook 2007
    etc.

I submit to you that making this menu task oriented is far easier for mobile users as long as there are actual task-based applications behind each item. So, a new folder structure for published apps may look as follows:

• Work with files (Folder)
  • Find & edit files (Opens Doc Finder)
  • Create Presentation (Opens PowerPoint in edit mode)
  • View a Slideshow (Opens PowerPoint Viewer)
  • Create a document (Opens Word)
  • Create a Spreadhseet (Opens Excel)
• View e-mail (Opens Outlook)

Another example might look like this if you were able to publish apps with command line parameters as mentioned in the first section above:

• Patient Care (Folder)
  • View dashboard (Dashboard that show me open tasks, active patients, messages, etc.)
  • View active patients (App that filters only current open cases assigned to me)
  • Record patient data (App that let’s you enter patient data)
  • Search Prescription Med DB (Reference app that let’s me search for info in prescription meds)
  • Write Prescription (App that let’s me write a prescription for my patients)
  • View historical records (App that let’s you view patient data for archived cases)
• Administration (Folder)
  • Order supplies
  • View budget
  • View payroll status
    etc.

So, the lesson here is that you don’t necessarily need to customize your applications as a first step. Consider simple things that you can do to make it easier for users by reducing the number of clicks or taps they have to go through to do what they need to do. Do a little research to find out how much flexibility you have in your own apps to get users to the screen they need to use right when they open the app. These things go a long way to creating a great user experience.

Stay tuned for more in my next post in this series – “Publishing useful apps.”

Register for XenApp Tech Previews including Receiver for Blackberry

See best practices in action at CitrixCloud.net

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