About Me

Ed York is an Architect within the Worldwide Technical Readiness division, leading the Technical Solutions team. After joining Citrix in 2000, Ed spent his first three years within Citrix Consulting before joining the Worldwide team.  As part of Worldwide Technical Readiness, Ed has performed a number of roles such as content developer, trainer, project manager, standards development, and most recently lead developer for the Technical Solutions team.

Ed has worked with a number of Citrix technologies over the years, including:

• XenApp, XenDesktop, XenServer
• NetScaler / Access Gateway
  
• Provisioning Services
• EdgeSight / EdgeSight for Load Testing
• Password Manager
• Workflow Studio

Ed has also worked with a number of programming technologies, including:

• Web Development:  HTML, JS, CSS, ASP, ASP.NET, XML
  
• Programming Languages:  C#, VB.NET, VB, C++
  
• Scripting Languages:  PowerShell, VBScript
  
• Development Tools:  Visual Studio, Workflow Studio
  

My Downloads

Here's a list of my downloads:

• Workflow Studio - Amazon EC2 Activity Library - this is an activity I helped co-author with Thomas Nikl.   It allows you to perform various automation actions against the Amazon EC2 cloud such as ordering and canceling virtual machines.
  
• Workflow Studio - SQL Server Activity Library - allows you to execute SQL statements (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, etc.) on a Microsoft SQL Server database as part of a workflow within Citrix Workflow Studio.
• Workflow Studio - AppList MFCOM Activity - sample activity based on MFCOM that retrieves the list of published applications from a XenApp 4.5 farm.

My Videos

Here's a list of my videos:

• TechTalk - New HDX Technologies within XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 - Learn about the new features in XenApp 5 Feature Pack 2 such as HDX MediaStream for Flash, HDX Plug-n-Play for USB Thumb Drives, and Secure Paste.  Recorded on 10/01/2009.
  

Development Resources

Here's a list of my favorite development resources:

• Citrix Developer Network (CDN) - your first place to go to for any Citrix development needs
• Microsoft Development Network (MSDN) - if you've done any programming recently, something tells me you already knew about this site :-)
  
• Windows PowerShell - great place to start on this very popular scripting technology
• C# Online.net - great forum for developing on the C# language
• WebMonkey.com - if you have done web development, you probably have visited this site a few times
  

About This Site

The Ask the Architect program is designed to bring customers and partners closer to the Citrix Architects who specialize in key Citrix Products.   We hope to deliver our experience on real-world implementations of Citrix technologies through various social media routes, such as blogs, tweets, whitepapers, and videos.

The Product-Automation site focuses on how to design and develop processes for streamlining and enhancing existing Citrix implementations.  These processes may come in the form of scripts, applications, tools, workflows, and procedures.   As I work on projects that focus on automating Citrix technologies, I hope to discuss those solutions as part of this site.   I also hope to reference any interesting and helpful 3rd party sites that I used to help build solutions.  If you are a Citrix admin or a developer of Citrix tools and solutions, you may find a lot of what we discuss on this site useful as part of your daily job.     

I encourage you to visit the other Ask the Architect sites to hear from the other Citrix Architects on various products and technologies:

• Next Generation Desktop - Dan Feller
  
• XenApp and XenDesktop Together - Jo Harder
  
• XenDesktop with Microsoft Technologies - Paul Wilson
  
• Application Networking - Stefan Drege
  
• Branch Office Optimization - Jason Maynard
  
• Everything Healthcare - Florian Becker
  
• Cloud Services - Tarkan Kocoglu
  

If you have any comments or suggestions about the Ask the Architect site or program, please contact us at AsktheArchitect@Citrix.com.