Application Features Requiring Pre- or Post-Conversion Actions

AdminStudio 2021 | 21.0 | Automated Application Converter / App-V Assistant / ThinApp Assistant / Citrix Assistant

Some application features are ignored when creating a Citrix profile. Therefore, some additional pre- or post-conversion actions must be taken in order for the application profile to run on Citrix XenApp.

One action you could take to try to include ignored features in a Citrix profile is to first repackage the application using the Repackaging Wizard, and then convert the repackaged application to a Citrix profile.

The following table lists the application features which require additional, manual conversion steps:

Application Features Ignored During Profile Conversion

Windows Installer Feature

Manual Conversion Steps

User-Defined Custom Actions

When converting a Windows Installer package to a Citrix profile, all custom actions are ignored. For user-defined custom actions, a warning message is generated. Any modifications to a target machine that a custom action in this Windows Installer package may create will not be propagated into the Citrix profile.

The resolution that you should perform depends upon the purpose of the custom action:

If the custom action merely automatically enters a value or makes some other kind of minor modification, you can ignore this warning.
If the custom action does something which could change the behavior of the installation (such as setting a Property), you may need to resolve this issue.

To resolve this issue, first attempt to launch the converted package on Citrix XenApp. If you receive any application errors, you need to repackage this application, by performing the following steps.

To successfully convert a package with user-defined custom actions:

1. Use the Repackaging Wizard to repackage this application.The Repackaging Wizard monitors system changes as an application is installed, and then that data is converted into a Repackager project.
2. Build the Repackager project to generate a revised Windows Installer package. This new Windows Installer package does not contain any custom actions, but (as a result of being repackaged) it will include the functionality performed by the original custom action.

Services

Citrix XenApp does not support any type of services. Therefore, to resolve this issue, you need to install any required services outside of the isolation environment on the user desktop machines.

To successfully convert a package with services:

1. If you have an application and a service bundled in the same Windows Installer package, you need to create a separate Windows Installer package containing just the service.
2. Install the service on each of the user desktop machines. The Citrix profile of this application should now be able to run in an isolation environment on machines that already have the service installed.

COM+

While Citrix XenApp supports communicating with COM+ applications, it does not support installing COM+ services. Therefore, an application that contains COM+ services cannot be deployed on Citrix XenApp.