Where do you spend the most time in the Horizon console?

[Lola Groppi]

Horizon Wizards 🪄

Omnissa Research is on a quest and needs your help in mapping out the journey! 

Where do you find yourself "most at home" in the digital jungle that is Horizon? Are you conquering quests in Horizon or diving deep into a different realm entirely?

Tell us where you spend your precious time and what you're trying to accomplish. Do you venture to other pages within Horizon, or do you spread your adventure across multiple consoles? We'd like to know your play-by-play: what's your first move, your second move...? Your input isn't just valuable—it's legendary!

[Jubish Jose]

Horizon admin console, Horizon cloud console, vCenter console, App Volumes console, FSLogix/DEM machines, Azure File Shares, Domain Controllers, UAGs, Dell Wyse Console... the list is endless 🙂

[BenTrojahn]

iI the HZ console, I mostly in the "Farms" page.   Not persisting column widths, column selections, and "Rows per page" setting is seriously hampering when you have more than 20 farms. (this has been a feature request from myself and others for years)

The main all Sessions page would be infinitely more useful if column selections and widths could be used.   I dont think I've ever used "ClientID"  in 6 years and its taking up prime real estate.  It would be great if you could get to the Help desk tool information for any session from this page.   You cannot see "Applications" from this page either, for that you have go to the Farm and then see "Sessions" under that farm.  Linking this data on one table view that can be filtered, selected and persisted would be a huge improvement.

HZ console auth timeout shouldn't require a shift refresh of the page before you login again.  This doesn't happen on the Appvol login page.  

For Global entitlements, it displays the number of pods are servicing that entitlement but not WHICH pod.  being able to see pod\pool from any console would be handy.

Edited August 6 by BenTrojahn

[bjohn]

Fix the issue of the console timing out. Even if you have the API and console timeout settings set, when you are actively using the console, it shouldn't time out.

When you have the credentials saved in your browser, and when the console times out and you try to log back in, it says the saved password is wrong 90% of the time.

The help desk tool is valuable to see session stats etc.. but these stats are not available when you click a username. You have to separately find the user.

[Rico]

We have multiple Connection Servers within our CPA setup, and we would like to see the following features:

1. Single Sign-On (SSO) Capability: Implementing Single Sign-On (SAML and/or OIDC) across all our Connection Servers would significantly improve our workflow by reducing the time and effort required for authentication. This feature would not only streamline the user experience but also enhance security by allowing centralized authentication management.
2. Unified Admin Console for Managing Multiple Connection Server Environments: It would be highly beneficial to have a single administrative console from which we can manage all our Connection Server environments. This centralized management capability would save time and reduce complexity, making it easier to administer and monitor our Horizon deployment.

These enhancements would greatly improve our operational efficiency and provide a more seamless and secure experience for our users and administrators alike. We believe these features would be valuable additions to Horizon and would be widely appreciated by other users with similar setups.

[Rico]

Session overview: I want to see ALL sessions, broker and local. Please add more columns, which you already got on the background by the API like the clientType and clientIpAddress.

[Lola Groppi]

On 8/1/2024 at 7:09 AM, BenTrojahn said:

iI the HZ console, I mostly in the "Farms" page.   Not persisting column widths, column selections, and "Rows per page" setting is seriously hampering when you have more than 20 farms. (this has been a feature request from myself and others for years)

The main all Sessions page would be infinitely more useful if column selections and widths could be used.   I dont think I've ever used "ClientID"  in 6 years and its taking up prime real estate.  It would be great if you could get to the Help desk tool information for any session from this page.   You cannot see "Applications" from this page either, for that you have go to the Farm and then see "Sessions" under that farm.  Linking this data on one table view that can be filtered, selected and persisted would be a huge improvement.

HZ console auth timeout shouldn't require a shift refresh of the page before you login again.  This doesn't happen on the Appvol login page.  

For Global entitlements, it displays the number of pods are servicing that entitlement but not WHICH pod.  being able to see pod\pool from any console would be handy.

@BenTrojahn 

Thanks for the details Ben, this is helpful! 

Curious what you’re trying to accomplish in the Farms page - what tasks do you primarily do there? How much time do you spend?

Is there anywhere else you typically go in Horizon after Farms? If so, what do you do there?

[Lola Groppi]

On 8/2/2024 at 5:17 AM, bjohn said:

Fix the issue of the console timing out. Even if you have the API and console timeout settings set, when you are actively using the console, it shouldn't time out.

When you have the credentials saved in your browser, and when the console times out and you try to log back in, it says the saved password is wrong 90% of the time.

The help desk tool is valuable to see session stats etc.. but these stats are not available when you click a username. You have to separately find the user.

@bjohn Hey there - appreciate the response! 

Totally hear you about the console timing out - if i could be your fairy godmother and with the flick of my wand make it not do that...i would 🙂

I’d like to understand a bit more about what you’re using Horizon for - where do you spend the most time in the Horizon Console and what are you trying to accomplish? 

[Lola Groppi]

On 8/3/2024 at 11:01 AM, Rico said:

We have multiple Connection Servers within our CPA setup, and we would like to see the following features:

1. Single Sign-On (SSO) Capability: Implementing Single Sign-On (SAML and/or OIDC) across all our Connection Servers would significantly improve our workflow by reducing the time and effort required for authentication. This feature would not only streamline the user experience but also enhance security by allowing centralized authentication management.
2. Unified Admin Console for Managing Multiple Connection Server Environments: It would be highly beneficial to have a single administrative console from which we can manage all our Connection Server environments. This centralized management capability would save time and reduce complexity, making it easier to administer and monitor our Horizon deployment.

These enhancements would greatly improve our operational efficiency and provide a more seamless and secure experience for our users and administrators alike. We believe these features would be valuable additions to Horizon and would be widely appreciated by other users with similar setups.

@Rico 

Hi Rico - these are some great suggestions!

You mentioned improving operational efficiency for your admins - how many in your org are using Horizon? Do you use it for individual responsibilities or is there cross-collaboration where 1 Admin does a part of the workflow and another Admin finishes it? Is there any handoff like that? Any details here would be awesome!

[ishki]

For me Desktop Pool view is probably the most actively used, due to frequent need to monitor pool usage and push image updates, etc.

It would be great if the pool error status indicator which is now a tiny red dot could be changed to more visually noticeable alert (perhaps highlighting the whole row, for example).

If I may suggest another thing for consideration; in each Pool the Stop Provisioning on Error option is now strictly an on/off choice. I'd guess sometimes an error might be caused by just a momentary glitch, so if there would be an option to define number of errors (for instance, 5 tries ) to be tolerated before stopping, that might save users from basically unnecessary VM outage esp. considering out-of-working hours situation when manual admin intervention takes time. 

[Lola Groppi]

6 hours ago, ishki said:

For me Desktop Pool view is probably the most actively used, due to frequent need to monitor pool usage and push image updates, etc.

It would be great if the pool error status indicator which is now a tiny red dot could be changed to more visually noticeable alert (perhaps highlighting the whole row, for example).

If I may suggest another thing for consideration; in each Pool the Stop Provisioning on Error option is now strictly an on/off choice. I'd guess sometimes an error might be caused by just a momentary glitch, so if there would be an option to define number of errors (for instance, 5 tries ) to be tolerated before stopping, that might save users from basically unnecessary VM outage esp. considering out-of-working hours situation when manual admin intervention takes time. 

@ishki Appreciate the response! How much time a week do you think you spend in the Desktop Pool view? Or are you coming and going that it's hard to know?

Were you involved in the onboarding process?

[BenTrojahn]

On 8/6/2024 at 12:53 PM, Lola Groppi said:

@BenTrojahn 

Thanks for the details Ben, this is helpful! 

Curious what you’re trying to accomplish in the Farms page - what tasks do you primarily do there? How much time do you spend?

Is there anywhere else you typically go in Horizon after Farms? If so, what do you do there?

EDIT:   I read that with 2312 upgrade RDSH maintenance supposedly is fixed for this very issue!  We are heavy RDSH with 50+ farms spanning multiple pods on 12 clusters .  Farms page is typically for applying maintenance and disabling servers.  Speaking of which Horizon handling of "Drain" mode needs work.  Disabling Farms, or pools breaks reconnects, thus we disable RDSH to apply maintenance .  Then we can be back in the FARMS page checking status again incase maintenance fails (not rare). We typically roll 1-2 image updates a week so that can be a significant time even though we don't typically drain but would reboot with 15min warning.  The maintenance process should have an option to automatically disable RDSH servers at hh:mm so that new sessions are not started which maintenance is occurring or is about to.  

helpdesk Tool would be the next area followed by Global entitlements, application pools for troubleshooting. For instance:

Ticket says "My Horizon is broke"
   Helpdesk Tool to find user's active sessions/app or which desktop or see session data (why cant you get to this tool from "Sessions tab"??>>   then some combination of FARMs tab to disable server and  Global entitlement tab to find how many pods and which local pools (sadly that the console cannot tell you  about REMOTE pods/pools that are also in that global). Then from the pools, you can find the farm servicing that pool.  Select your server and disable, or disable all RDSH if there's a larger issue.

 

Edited August 22 by BenTrojahn