Clarity

Anyone have enable Clarity to be access outside the company intranet, i.e at home, via Citrix?

We are interested to do this, as users are requesting. But we do not know whether Clarity is compatible with Citrix or not.

Can anyone advise?

Thanks - Dott

My very NON CONCLUSIVE experience;

I used to try to access an Clarity 7.5.3 instance through Citrix (running IE6 in the Citrix environment) and I struggled - whether this was down to the Citrix bit or the IE installation itself I was never sure. The main problem I had were that clicking Clarity "buttons" didn't work (which rendered the app unusable).

Since the target environment was upgraded to 12.0.x then it appears much more stable (still using IE6) - it appears to work OK.

--

But none of my testing was "official" in any way, I was only doing it out of curiosity so didn't follow through on resolving any issues or making any conclusive statements about supportability to my user base. (I did not start out with any expectation that it would or would not work though).

Hi Dott.
I'll concur with Dave's findings on Clarity via Citrix. The variables are your Clarity version, Citrix version and the browser version in your Citrix VM. The only way to know what your performance will be is to setup and test.

Is Citrix a requirement? Or is your question "What's the best way to provide Clarity access to users outside the company intranet"?

A Reverse Proxy is the best way to provide remote access to the Clarity web application. Simpler, cheaper and (IMHO) more robust.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy

We use Microsoft TMG. It works like a champ. Check with your network team to see what reverse proxy capability you have - almost everyone has something these days.

Citirix is a good solution for Rich client problems, but overkill for a browser delivered web application like Clarity. There are also Citrix licenses to be aware of ($$$).

Notice I've stressed the words web application. We've been unsuccessful in getting our Client Tool (Open Workbench) to operate through the firewall. Clarity supports this, but we've been unsuccessful (I'm too dumm), have yet to meet a shop that runs our same reverse proxy (Microsoft ISA or TMG) who does this, nor can get CA Services to return our calls when we ask about having them help us with this (shameless plug - if anyone reading this can or more importantly has done this with M$ ISA or TMG - contact me, I have budget). Our solution here is for PMs to use VPN if they need to open their schedules in Workbench when working remotely.

HTH,
-R

Thanks Dave for sharing your experience. I cannot perform test on this thats why asking you guys here.

Rob and all,

Our Clarity now is 12.0.5 and Citrix version is XenApp 5.0. The browser in the Citrix is IE7. Hopefully compatibility is not an issue here as we do not have any method to test this.

Our org is already have Citrix. Our plan at this moment is to have a link to Clarity, in another web application which is accessible via Citrix.

I am also checking with our network team on the possibility for reverse-proxy.

Btw, I've also logged a case to CA Support and the answer I get is:
'I am afraid Citrix isn't a supported deployment environment for Clarity.
This doesn't mean that it won't work. A browser used through Citrix would

just be a browser
as far as Clarity is concerned. There might be issues
for MSP or OWB if used via Citrix.

I would suggest that you contact your Account Manager to engage CA
Services. They might be able to offer more information and/or help on this.'

Hi Dott.
Just to clarify, I'm simply advocating making sure you're using the right tool for the job. We own Citrix too, we just don't use it for Clarity. We have a reverse proxy gateway that is a better solution for the problem to solve: providing users Clarity access outside the corporate intranet. If Citrix is your only option, then this gets simple - Citrix it is.