Citrix’s remote work requirement in response to COVID-19 has given our employees in Nanjing, China, and around the globe the opportunity to experience working from home. To stay productive away from the office, you have to have reliable, remote access to corporate resources, and your remote desktop connection has to be high performing.

Some of the more commonly used remote access technology solutions are easy to set up and connect, but they have many limitations and restrictions. Some of these include low quality of graphics and audio, as well as poor keyboard and mouse response that can affect productivity. If I asked you what’s most important when it comes to remote desktop operation, you might say, “Low-bandwidth network adaptability; a great user experience; and low consumption of CPU and other resources.”

Powered by our HDX technology, Citrix’s Remote PC Access delivers all three. By simply leveraging the power of the corporate PCs you have in the office, the solution delivers a great user experience while helping you stay productive. With Citrix Remote PC Access, you get:

  • Low-bandwidth network tolerance — Internet speed can increase and decrease depending on the time of day. Our HDX technology delivers high-quality audio and video, even when there’s low or inconsistent bandwidth. With Citrix’s Adaptive Transport, HDX delivers, even in a high-latency network. For example, it can treat the static and moving areas of the screen differently. HDX measures the packet loss in a network and compensates for it, maintaining responsiveness.
  • Reliability and stability — HDX can adapt to a wide range of network conditions. For example, the session-reliability feature enables the client to automatically reconnect back to its remote desktop session after recovering from a network disruption. You can even resume an in-progress file transfer.
  • Flexibility — Remote PC Access supports all types of client computers and devices — Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, or Linux. Even on an unsupported OS, you can use Citrix Workspace app for HTML5 to access your remote PC, as long as there is a web browser on your device.
  • Enhanced security and rich configurations — Though out-of-the-box configuration is optimized for most scenarios, you have a lot of options and settings you can configure to meet your needs. For example, you can apply policies to enhance security and properly organize Active Directory organizational units to support management of remote PCs in a large working group. You can tweak HDX to meet requirements such as reduced resource consumption.

There are so many other great features of Remote PC Access. Two of my favorites are browser content redirection (BCR) and the client-side input method editor (IME).

BCR allows the entire browser content to be seamlessly redirected to the client for select webpages or domains. Normally the web page content is loaded and rendered on the server (Remote PC Access) side, and the user sees what’s passed to the client through HDX channel. With BCR, the client loads and renders the web page content, bypassing the server and the HDX channel. This greatly reduces the network load between the client and remote server, as well as the resources used, with no impact to the user.

Some languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, have characters that require an IME. HDX supports using the client-side input method in the remote desktop session. This helps when a user prefers their favorite IME that’s installed on the client or if the remote PC has no IME installed. This client-side IME solution gives users access to their preferred style while delivering a seamless user experience.

A Simple Deployment

Remote PC Access is powerful but easy to deploy. And you have choice. With robust policies and options, you can finetune it to meet your needs. Or you can do a quick start deployment. Here’s an how that would work:

  • Install a Delivery Controller in the domain. It’s easy and shouldn’t take longer than an hour.
  • Install VDA on the machines that need to be accessed remotely (they can be Windows or Linux machines). You can also complete this step using software distribution such as Active Directory scripts if you need to install VDA on many machines.
  • Add the machines to Machine Catalog and assign them to users. You can do this using Active Directory organizational units.

Once you’re done, you’re ready to launch the desktops on your remote machines using the Citrix Workspace app.

It’s easy to get started with Remote PC Access, empower your employees to work from home, and deliver a great user experience. Learn more about Remote PC Access here, and take a deep dive with our new reference architectures on Citrix Tech Zone!