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Citrix ClientName Issue Resolved?

Wednesday, 26 July 2006 by Michel Roth

If you use Web Interface 3.0 or later, and especially if you work in health care, you have probably noticed that connections made to Presentation Server via Web Interface don't use the client's workstation NetBIOS name as the Presentation Server ClientName variable. Instead, it's a random string such as WI_e5KPgXSIWWtOWAQTg. This change was introduced as part of the Workspace Control feature that allows users to roam from device to device and have their Presentation Server sessions automatically reconnect when they roam from one workstation to another.

But there was a regrettable side effect of leveraging the ClientName variable for unique device identification: some applications, particularly health care apps like Epic, relied on the %CLIENTNAME% environment variable to pinpoint a user's location based on a database of known NetBIOS workstation names. If you run an application in your CPS farm that relies on the "real" client name, then you are left having to choose between application compatibility and workspace contol. (And app compatibility always wins!)

Let's take a look at how we got into this mess and how we're going to get out of it.

Read the full post a Jay Tomlins blog.