The Citrix Workflow Studio Evaluation Virtual Appliance (EVA) is now available. This EVA provides you with 30 days to evaluate a pre-configured virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 that has Workflow Studio 2.0 already installed and configured with all activity libraries and the sample workflows from CDN. Download the EVA and review the Getting Started guide .

If you have any questions leave a comment or contact me directly

I started a video series on CitrixTV for tips & tricks for working with Workflow Studio. The first video is an explanation of how to use the If/Else activity and conditional logic in your workflows. I'll be posting more videos to the series over time, so if there is something you would like to know how to do then leave feedback in comments or email me directly and I will try to address it.

There are some new articles posted on the Workflow Studio section of CDN. These will probably only be of interest to the developers and advanced workflow gurus out there, but I found them interesting and wanted to share (yes, I am a geek )

• Configuring Workflow Studio to use SQL Server for Tracking and Persistence
• Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

Keep in mind that most of the CDN sections for Workflow Studio are open to the general public to post and edit (be sure to share your workflows and activity libraries). The tips and tricks article was intentionally left open to all to edit - come on in and share. Make sure you bookmark the articles section, add it to your RSS reader, or just click on the Community tab from within Workflow Studio every time you open it.

We have posted some initial XenApp workflows that demonstrate the capabilities in the new XenApp activity library. You can use these workflows to backup applications on your farm and then restore them to specific servers in your farm. These workflows are useful for backup purposes and also can aid in migrating applications between farms (e.g. QA to production).

XenApp-Backup Applications
XenApp-Restore Applications to Server

As always feel free to leave feedback in comments or email me directly.

Learn more about Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2

• Official Press Release - http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1857726
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 release Web Site - http://citrix.com/xenapp/featurepack2
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Executive Video - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/video
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Release Webinar - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/techtalk
• XenApp Expert Series videos for this release - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/expertseries
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Blogs- http://community.citrix.com/blogs/tag/xa5fp2
• Download XenApp technology previews - http://citrix.com/xenapp/techpreviews
• XenApp Product Page - http://citrix.com/xenapp/

Follow XenApp on | | |

With Workflow Studio 2.0 we officially support 8 different OS platforms (all on the latest service pack only):

• Windows XP x86
• Windows XP x64
• Windows Vista x86
• Windows Vista x64
• Windows Server 2003 R2 x86
• Windows Server 2003 R2 x64
• Windows Server 2008 x86
• Windows Server 2008 x64

We don't stop you from installing on unsupported platforms and the chances are pretty good that everything will work just fine. However, we know that everyone wants to use their product in a fully supported environment. As we plan for the next release, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available. To make sure we make the right decisions on which platforms we officially support I would like to get your feedback.

Please take the polls below to let us know which platform(s) you want to be able to use Workflow Studio with and whether you need 32-bit support only, 64-bit support only, or both:

If you would like to install Workflow Studio in an unattended fashion or if you just want to learn more about the installation process, there is now an article available on the community site:

http://community.citrix.com/display/wf/Workflow+Studio+2.0+Installation+Overview

Learn more about Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2

• Official Press Release - http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1857726
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 release Web Site - http://citrix.com/xenapp/featurepack2
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Executive Video - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/video
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Release Webinar - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/techtalk
• XenApp Expert Series videos for this release - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/expertseries
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Blogs- http://community.citrix.com/blogs/tag/xa5fp2
• Download XenApp technology previews - http://citrix.com/xenapp/techpreviews
• XenApp Product Page - http://citrix.com/xenapp/

Follow XenApp on | | |

Alessandro over at virtualization.info commented that we need to do a better job communicating the value and capabilities of Workflow Studio:
http://www.virtualization.info/2009/09/release-citrix-workflow-studio-20.html

I have to admit, I have been focused on talking about the new version and features (I'm excited about them.) There are lots of places though where we do talk about the capabilities that Workflow Studio enables for our customers:

On the main product page for Workflow Studio we cover the 5 use cases that customers typically use Workflow Studio for:

1. Power management - Reduce power consumption in the datacenter.
2. User provisioning - Automate the process of provisioning users.
3. Dynamic resource allocation - Detect changes in user traffic patterns and automatically re-configure server resources for on-demand access.
4. Disaster recovery - Automate failover and recovery procedures.
5. Product automation - Automate repetitive tasks and ensure best practices are followed.

I am also taking each of the bullets from the original post announcing the availability of Workflow Studio 2.0 and going into more detail. I just posted Automate XenApp with Workflow Studio where I talk about some of the use cases that we based the new XenApp libraries on. I will have some sample workflows posted with video tutorials as well.

I wrote The Three Audiences of Workflow Studio back in February, but it is still just as relevant with the current version of Workflow Studio. 'Scripting guys' and developers will find a lot to like in Workflow Studio, but you don't need to be one to benefit from Workflow Studio. The drag-and-drop interface and standard way of accessing all the Citrix product APIs (as well as PowerShell, Windows, WMI, etc.) opens up access to a much broader range of people.

The Workflow Studio 2.0 Video Tutorial Series provides an introduction, an architectural overview, and an installation/configuration guide for getting started and should help save you time as you consider how to deploy Workflow Studio.

Also, I want to clarify the availability of Workflow Studio as an anonymous comment left there indicates there may be some confusion. Workflow Studio is included as part of ALL editions of the Citrix Delivery Center products - not just Platinum. Workflow Studio comes with all of the below:

• XenApp Advanced, Enterprise, or Platinum edition
• XenDesktop Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, or Platinum edition
• NetScaler Standard, Enterprise, or Platinum edition
• Essentials for XenServer Enterprise and Platinum editions
• Essentials for Hyper-V Enterprise and Platinum editions

As always leave me your feedback in the comments or email me directly...

In a previous post announcing the availability of Workflow Studio 2.0 I listed the new features that are available. Here is a closer look at the first feature mentioned:

Native XenApp activity libraries

With the 2.0 release of Workflow Studio, we now include 18 activities for managing application virtualization scenarios with XenApp. These activities provide access to your XenApp farm, servers, applications, and even sessions.

These 18 activities were designed around two key use cases:

1. Backup/Restore of applications - By providing access to retrieve current published applications as well as publishing new applications, these activities provide the ability to do automated configuration backups, QA to Production migrations, and help automate version upgrades. View sample workflows that address this use case for backup and restore.
2. Manage logons - Many customers expressed the need to be able to automatically manage access to their XenApp servers. We also received feedback that the way customers most often manage logons is through the use of customized load evaluator rules. We included activities that help manage logons for automated maintenance of XenApp servers.

These activities are installed by the activity library installer and leverage the new Commands for PowerShell to interface with XenApp. Everything you need to build a XenApp workflow is included in the installer, but to run the workflow you will need to meet two requirements:

1. You must install either Workflow Studio or a Runtime on a XenApp server in your farm as these commands do not support remote connections. The XenApp server you install it on just needs to be a member of the farm and does not need to be serving applications.
2. These activities only support XenApp 4.5 HRP3 and later. If you need access to prior versions of XenApp, you will need to use MFCOM. More information on how to use Workflow Studio with MFCOM is available in this Workflow Studio SDK MFCOM example.

Keep in mind that we also support native activities that run VBScript and PowerShell scripts. If there is something missing from our activity libraries that you want to automate you may be able to do so through a script and not actually need a native activity for a given task.

The Workflow Studio 2.0 Video Tutorial Series provides an introduction, an architectural overview, and an installation/configuration guide for getting started and should help save you time as you consider how to deploy Workflow Studio.

I'm sure our customers and partners will find other unique use cases. Feel free to leave feedback in comments or email me directly to let me know what you are doing with the product (or what you would like to be able to do.)

Workflow Studio is included with XenApp Feature Pack 2

Learn more about Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2

• Official Press Release - http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1857726
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 release Web Site - http://citrix.com/xenapp/featurepack2
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Executive Video - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/video
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Release Webinar - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/techtalk
• XenApp Expert Series videos for this release - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/expertseries
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Blogs- http://community.citrix.com/blogs/tag/xa5fp2
• Download XenApp technology previews - http://citrix.com/xenapp/techpreviews
• XenApp Product Page - http://citrix.com/xenapp/

Follow XenApp on | | |

I posted the first 3 videos for the Workflow Studio 2.0 video tutorial series on CitrixTV:

1. Getting Started with Workflow Studio 2.0
2. Workflow Studio 2.0 Architecture and Components
3. Installing and Configuring Workflow Studio 2.0

You can access the series and watch them all in a playlist format from here:
http://www.citrix.com/tv/series/109

I plan to add some more video tutorials to this series and also plan to do a series that explores the new features in 2.0 specifically. Let me know what you think and what other topics you want me to cover...

I'm pleased to announce that Workflow Studio 2.0 is now available:

Download Workflow Studio 2.0 (MyCitrix login required)

This release has a number of great new features and is a seamless upgrade from version 1.x. Here are some of the key new features:

• Native XenApp activity libraries (and many other additional activities)
• Remote runtimes
• Simplified management interface
• Enhanced security features
• Simplified installation and configuration
• Improved SDK
• Simplified workflow Designer
• Globalization support

I will post some more blogs over the next few days with more details on the above features and will also be updating the CDN site with many new articles, so subscribe to the Workflow Studio blog and head over to the Workflow Studio CDN site and subscribe for updates on CDN as well.

Feel free to leave feedback in comments or email me directly.

Workflow Studio will be included with XenApp Feature Pack 2

Learn more about Citrix XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2

• Official Press Release - http://citrix.com/English/NE/news/news.asp?newsID=1857726
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 release Web Site - http://citrix.com/xenapp/featurepack2
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Executive Video - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/video
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Release Webinar - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/techtalk
• XenApp Expert Series videos for this release - http://citrix.com/xenapp/fp2/expertseries
• XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 Blogs- http://community.citrix.com/blogs/tag/xa5fp2
• Download XenApp technology previews - http://citrix.com/xenapp/techpreviews
• XenApp Product Page - http://citrix.com/xenapp/

Follow XenApp on | | |

The Workflow Studio community site is the place to find information on all things Workflow Studio. Did you know that most of the site is also open for community contributions as well? Here is a brief overview of the sections of the site that are open for the community:

• Articles This section of the site is where you will find articles provided by the Workflow Studio product team as well as community contributed articles. Articles will typically be overviews, technical tips/tricks, how-to guides, etc.
• Activity Libraries This is where you will find all the activity libraries provided by the community. There are already some interesting ones out there from other internal groups at Citrix like the SQL Server one that Ed posted (along with the source code if you want to extend it) and the AG Standard Edition library provided by Audra.
• Workflows Here you will find workflows created by the community. Make sure you check the activity library requirements for a workflow and download the activity libraries first if required.
• Forums The forums section is for general conversation about the product, workflow development, activity library development, feature requests, etc. If you have a support question there is a dedicated support forum as well.

The main community page is also available inside Workflow Studio on the Community tab. You will also find a built-in reader for the Blogs, Workflows, and Activity Libraries sections of the site that allows you to easily search and download workflows and activity libraries right in the product.

Make sure you check each of these areas to see what is available, but I also encourage you to post your own articles, activity libraries, workflows, and questions. Don't be shy...

If anyone has any comments on the community site please post them below...

Pete

So, who do I think is right? That is easy - they both are!

First I want to say thank you to both of these guys for getting a discussion going. If I can paraphrase Brandon's side of the argument it would be "Why do I need Workflow Studio? I have Windows PowerShell." This is a question I have gotten a lot and I want to take some time to address it here.

Workflow Studio is designed to run on top of PowerShell. PowerShell 1.0 is a pre-requisite and many of our activities are written in PowerShell. Like Brandon, I think that PowerShell is an excellent scripting language and I personally can't wait for the day when everything is in PowerShell and there is no more need for VBScript. I believe every Windows administrator should learn PowerShell and use it regularly. I am doing what I can to drive all Citrix products to expose an SDK in PowerShell.

So wait a minute then... if the Product Manager for Workflow Studio is saying to use PowerShell then what is Workflow Studio for?

There is no reason that you should have to decide between the two technologies. If you are a Citrix customer then you have Workflow Studio at no additional cost. Workflow Studio has a great SDK for consuming PowerShell libraries, so you can leverage your existing PowerShell libraries with Workflow Studio. Here are some other things you can do with Workflow Studio:

1. Workflows are stored centrally in a SQL database making sharing and re-use across your team much easier
2. Workflows are automatically versioned when stored in the database. If you update a workflow that has been deployed, a copy is automatically created so you can continue to reference and use the previous version.
3. Workflow Studio is integrated with a task scheduling interface to automate the execution of your workflows based on schedule.
4. Workflow Studio has a simple, graphical, drag and drop interface. Most likely not everyone on your team is a PowerShell expert. Workflow Studio provides a simple interface that lets those not familiar with PowerShell be productive with it as well.
5. Workflow Studio can easily integrate with things that aren't PowerShell (native libraries support VBScript, WMI, and running batch files. You can also use 'off-the-shelf' activity libraries for Workflow Foundation as well.)
6. Workflow Studio is designed to support persistence. For simple, quick jobs, someone who is familiar with PowerShell and the cmdlets necessary to complete a given task will be more effective using the PowerShell command line interface. If the task requires several levels of approvals over hours, days, or even months then Workflow Studio and its underlying persistence and tracking engine from Workflow Foundation is a better tool for the job.

And remember, everything in Workflow Studio is exposed via PowerShell, so you can build your own interfaces to your workflows in PowerShell.

I would love to get more feedback on this topic in the comments. Let me know if you agree or disagree. Ultimately these are both just tools and if they don't help you do your job then they are meaningless. Let us know how we can make both technologies work better for your organization.

Just in case you haven't seen the posts by Ed York and Michael Bogobowicz on Workflow Studio recently I wanted to call them out. In addition to providing some excellent activities and workflows for you, there are posts that explain the process of creating activities and workflows around XenApp, Provisioning Server, and SQL.

Michael wrote a workflow that automates the update of vDisks in Provisioning Server using the CLI tools:
http://community.citrix.com/display/wf/PVS+Automatic+vDisk+Update+Script

Ed has written up two excellent blog series on Workflow Studio:

• Workflow Studio SDK - This first series of posts detail Ed's experiences using the Workflow Studio SDK to build and debug custom activities and are an excellent place to start if you want to build your own activities:
  http://community.citrix.com/x/YIUJB
  Ed followed this series up with a post on building an activity to get a list of applications from XenApp using the MFCOM SDK and this activity and source code are available for download:
  http://community.citrix.com/x/KgE-B
  Ed also wrote a couple of activities that work with SQL Server:
  http://community.citrix.com/x/2IJiB

• Automating Workflow Studio - The second series of posts is on automating workflows. Ed has posts that explain how to use the PowerShell interface to start a workflow and pass parameters to it. He then goes on to explain how to build your own front-end for starting these workflows:
  http://community.citrix.com/x/ToNiB

As a reminder, all community posts on activity libraries and workflows will show up right in the Workflow Studio product under the Community tab so you don't even have to go out to the site to look. RSS feeds are also available on the Community site if you want to get notified in your favorite RSS reader.

During the Tech Preview of Workflow Studio, the most popular posts I had were around using Workflow Studio to create a green data center:

• Green Data Center - Support for Wake On LANhttp://community.citrix.com/x/RQUgAg

• Green Data Center - Getting the power back on
  http://community.citrix.com/x/AQUgAg

• Green Data Center - Shutting Down a Windows Server
  http://community.citrix.com/x/9IUNAg

• Green Data Center - Shutting Down a XenServer Host
  http://community.citrix.com/x/1IAVAg

I wanted to review these very popular posts and talk about how the most recent versions of Workflow Studio can be leveraged for these tasks.

Wake On LAN
Support for WakeOnLAN was included in the activity library pack made available in April with version 1.1. The WakeOnLAN activity is in the 'Networking' library and in the 'Networking' folder in the Designer once installed:

Shutting Down a Windows Server
In the Tech Preview post, I talked about two methods of shutting down a computer. One of those two methods - LaunchProcess - is available as part of the library pack that was released in April (under Windows), but also in that pack is a Shutdown activity that manages this for you. The Shutdown Windows activity is in the Networking library with Wake On LAN.

Shutting Down a XenServer host
In the Tech Preview post, I talked about several activities for interfacing with XenServer VMs and the XenServer host. These activities are all part of the library pack from April. These activities are in the 'Citrix XenServer' library and in the 'Citrix XenServer' folder in the Designer once installed:

The host activities Disable-Host and Shutdown-Host that were in the Tech Preview post are not available yet, but will be in the next update to this library.

If you are using Workflow Studio to manage power in your environment, drop me a line and let me know how it is going. If you aren't using it, let me know what we can do to make it easier for you.

Everyone who was at Snyergy last week wanted the link to how to do snapshots in XenServer. Here is the link to Shannon's PowerShell snap-in:

http://shannon.neutex.net/2008/11/06/hot-off-the-compiler-powershell-snapin-for-xenserver-snapshots/

I will also post a 'how-to' guide on how to convert this to an activity library.

I just posted an article on the components that are pre-requisites for Workflow Studio and how you can extend the ISO image we provided to include all components if you wish:

http://community.citrix.com/display/wf/Workflow+Studio+Pre-Requisites

I find it useful to have a CD image with everything on it that auto-runs, and thought that others might as well.

Now that we have released Workflow Studio 1.1, I wanted to point out that we also have articles with details about what is available in each activity library. There are 8 different libraries listed in the installer - click on the item below to view the activities available with each one:

• Citrix NetScaler
• Citrix XenServer
• Active Directory
• Group Policy
• Networking
• Windows
• WMI
• Workflow Math Functions

Note: The Group Policy activity library requires the Microsoft Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) to be installed before it can be used. You can get GPMC here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0a6d4c24-8cbd-4b35-9272-dd3cbfc81887&displaylang=en

Workflow Studio 1.1 is now available for download on MyCitrix. With this release we have also included the first set of activity libraries for Citrix products (and some Windows products and technologies as well). The installer will allow you to select which libraries you would like to install. You will find the following files on MyCitrix for download:

• WFStudio.iso - This is an .iso image file that contains all of the Workflow Studio installers and the redistributable components in a packaged CD image that supports auto-run. This is very useful for making your own CD/DVD or for installing Workflow Studio onto a virtual machine.

If you want to download the individual installers they are available separately as well:

• Setup.exe - There has been no change to the setup program. It still checks your system for the necessary pre-requisites and then automatically launches the correct MSI file for your platform
• WFStudio.msi - This is an update to the core components of Workflow Studio for 32-bit systems.
• WFStudio_x64.msi - This is an update to the core components of Workflow Studio for 64-bit systems.
• WFStudioActivities.msi - Activity Library package for 32-bit systems.
• WFStudioActivities_x64.msi - Activity Library package for 64-bit systems.

We will be releasing all supported activity libraries as updates to this installer package going forward. Currently, it contains the following:

• Citrix NetScaler
• Citrix XenServer
• Active Directory
• Group Policy
• Networking
• Windows
• WMI
• Workflow Math Functions

You will need to upgrade to version 1.1 of the core product before you can install the activity library package, and you will also need to manually run the activity library installer after upgrading to 1.1. In the future we will be updating the Setup.exe program to handle this installation automatically.

The 1.1 installer will detect 1.0 if installed and automatically upgrade it for you.

We had a question on the support forums about modifying the database used for Workflow Studio, which defaults to 'WFDB'. All the SQL scripts are provided for you in the Workflow Studio install, and we anticipated our customers wanting to have multiple databases on a single server or just changing the name from the default 'WFDB' name. In fact, if the SQL Admin wants more control they can customize as much as needed.

I wrote up an article to cover the process:
http://community.citrix.com/display/wf/Customizing+Your+Workflow+Studio+Database

If anyone tries this and runs into problems let me know

I have a lot of ideas for posts that I think will only be interesting to the software developer - the third audience of Workflow Studio. I started wondering just how many people reading this blog would consider themselves to fall into this category. Go back and read the post on the Three Audiences of Workflow Studio and then vote here to tell me which group you fall into. If you cross over more than one of them, pick the one you are most interested in reading about.

Which audience are you?	Choose
IT Operations
Server Administrator
Software Developer