In Citrix Metaframe XP Feature Release 2 Citrix introduced content redirection. Content redirection can be divided in two parts.

• Server to Client content redirection; this makes it possible to start URLs locally on the client PC. Embedded URLs are intercepted on the server running Presentation Server and sent to the client. The user’s locally installed browser is used to display the website.
• Client to Server content redirection; when a user double-clicks a file the corresponding application is started on the Citrix server.

This article will describe in detail the latter, Client to Server content redirection. First I will describe the requirements, followed by the standard configuration of Client to Server Redirection.

Requirements

As mentioned, since Metaframe XP Feature Release 2 (FR2) content redirection is available within the Presentation server suite and has not changed much in the meantime. So everything explained in this document applies to all versions from the Metaframe XP FR2 till Citrix Presentation Server 4.

To use Client To Server redirection you are limited to some components and requirements, which I will describe this in this section.

Citrix Program Neighborhood

Before you can use client to server redirection you need to make a design decision.

Client to Server redirection is only available when using the Citrix Program Neighborhood Agent (PNAgent). Using the PNAgent can change the way users are used to starting their applications, if you are already using Citrix. Also, using PNAgent has one big requirement:

Web Interface

This requirement is Citrix Web Interface. Citrix PNAgent connects to the Web Interface to query which applications are available for the user and which file associations are available. Web Interface runs on a Microsoft Internet Information Server, so you need at least one server. For fault tolerance, load balancing, and avoiding a Single Point of Failure (SPOF) you should think about using two Web Interface servers.

Advanced or Enterprise version

Client to Server redirection is not available in all versions. Only the Advanced and Enterprise version have the Client to Server redirection feature available.

Client Drive Mapping

Client Drive Mapping is the last requirement for Client to Server Redirection. Without mapped client drives the feature does not function, so client driver mapping needs to be enabled.

Configuration

Configuring Client to Server redirection is actually pretty easy normally. You need to configure your Web Interface Server and install and configure the Citrix PNAgent as normal. When publishing an application you can choose the file extensions you want to associate to that application in the last screen during the Publish Application wizard.