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Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F

by Ray Davis, CTA, Jacksonville CUGC Leader

In my recent work with a client, I introduced a powerful sealing tool called BIS-F. If you’re not familiar with BIS-F, don’t worry, many of my clients aren’t either. But that’s okay because I’m here to explain it and show how it can be useful. BIS-F is particularly helpful for those working on the end-user computing side of things.

During this project, I wanted to automate as much as possible, and one way to do that was to use Citrix Optimizer with custom templates in combination with BIS-F. This is a tool that allows you to optimize various applications and tools for use in a Citrix environment. I have seen many people build custom templates with Citrix Optimizer to do some pretty cool things.

When I help deploy Citrix, I always introduce my clients to Citrix Optimizer and give them a range of templates to use. These templates cover a variety of applications, including Edge, Chrome, SCCM task, O365, Adobe, and much more. All of these templates have been gathered from various sources in the EUC community, with some of my own additions.

In this quick blog post, I won’t be going into detail on how to create a Citrix Optimizer template. Instead, I’ll focus on how to add it to BISF to ensure that your golden image, when opened, will continue to have the Citrix Optimizer template applied without needing to run it in the GUI or via another script.

To get started, you’ll need to download and install the BIS-F installer on your golden image. Then, upload the ADMX files to your repository, and you’re ready to start sealing! If you’re interested in learning more about setting up BIS-F, I’ll provide some helpful links below.

  1. Installer docs
    1. Installation (eucweb.com)
  1. ADMX docs
    1. GPO Configuration – EUCweb.com | focused on Citrix and Microsoft Technologies
  1. Installer MSI
    1. Download BIS-F – EUCweb.com | focused on Citrix and Microsoft Technologies
  1. Be kind and donate to help this tool continue to get love. Many hours have gone into this tool that many of us use for free. Show some love and give back by donating. Small amounts add up.
    1. Donation BIS-F – EUCweb.com | focused on Citrix and Microsoft Technologies
  1. How to create a custom Citrix Optimzaer Template
    1. Dennis Span covers this well if you want to learn more about creating your own Citrix Optimizer template. Creating a custom template for Citrix Optimizer – Dennis Span. Always test your optimizations to ensure they are correct for your environment. One optimization may work well in one setting, but that may not work well in another environment. Each set has parts that need to be accounted for within your environment.

As you can see, a fellow CTP, Mathias Schlimm, did a great job breaking it down. I must admit I had to reach out to him to get some clarification. For some reason, my brain was not allowing me to do certain things at that time until he explained things a bit further. I suppose it happens to us all at times. But the light bulb went off 😊.  Thank you Mathias Schlimm.

The EUCWeb site contains essential data on this tool—the links I am posting cover much more information than this quick blog.

There are three templates I use regularly:

  1. User_profile_optimization_RobZylowski
  2. Autoselect or custom Windows 10Windows Server Template for the needs. Read more about AutoSelect here
    • “AutoSelect with Multiple Templates:”
    • “For Autoselection of the OS Template in combination with multiple Templates please use:”
      “AutoSelect,PVS_Optimization.xml,3rd_Party.xml”
    • “AutoSelect is a hardcoded string and must be used in the GPO, BIS-F will trigger the right OS template for Citrix Optimizer”
  3. JohnBillekens_3rd_Party_Components
  4. Download Citrix Optimizer if not already done. Download the Template and place this in the following location. CitrixOptimizer\Templates. Or create your own, which will save here as well.
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
  1. Once your templates are created and downloaded, you must take the Citrix Optimizer program and put it on the Golden image. The GPO describes where to put it, but “C:\Program Files” is one accepted location. So, it will look like this.
using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
  1. Back within the BISF GPO (Depending on what you called it when you created the GPO), Edit it and navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates> Base Image Script Framework (BIS-F) > Citrix>Configure Citrix Optimizer
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
  1. As you can see above, you can enter a customer search folder and list (Optional) Templates
    • I kept it simple for this use case.
      • I got all my templates in the Templates folder of Citrix Optimizer
      • Copied Citrix Optimizer into C:\Program Files. It reads like this now.
      • C:\Program Files (x86)\CitrixOptimizer. Then you list your template names.
      • Lab_Windows_10_21H2.xml,JohnBillekens_3rd_Party_Components.xml,User_Profile_Optimizations_RobZylowski.xml
  2. Once you are ready to run this on your golden image, execute the BIS-F script, and it will implement it for you. As shown below, my three Templates are running.
  3. Run the icon here or browse to the location C:\Program files (x86)\Base Image Script Framework (BIS-F) and open “PrepareBaseImage”
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
  1. Details on the three XML files it calls from GPO.
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
  1. Once completed, it will log them to the location where you set up the logs and the file output showing it was run. To set up Logging, enable this GPO.
  1. Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates> Base Image Script Framework (BIS-F) > Global>Configure Logging. More information on this can be found here. Configure Logging (eucweb.com)
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
  1. Back in my logging locations, you will see logs it put things on order from the GPO that was configured for Logging. You will also see the Citrix Optimizer XML files that it executed. I like this very much!
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F
Using Citrix Optimizer with BIS-F

Once it is completed, my image will shut down, ready to be pushed out. That concludes this quick write-up on how to run Citrix Optimizer inside BIS-F. I hope it helps.

Base Image Script Framework (BIS-F) Archives – EUCweb.com | focused on Citrix and Microsoft Technologies

2 comments

  2. Great information. I always use BIS-F w/Citrix Optimizer but I have not played around too much with custom templates yet. This will definitely help get me started.

    Reply

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