Method to Limit Use of Application in Citrix Environment 2

[lbass]

This area is not my forte, but I'll try to describe the issue as best as I can.

At work, I have a personal network (centrally located) drive on a wide area network where I store reports, instead of storing them locally. No one else can access my drive. When running CR, I am accessing a database that is centrally located via a T1 line.

I also have remote access from home via Citrix that allows me access to my personal drive and other shared drives on the WAN via a virtual desktop (central management is not open yet to allowing remote access to our actual work desktops).

I have a license for CR at home and a license at work, but I can't access my Crystal Reports application via Citrix, unless it is loaded somewhere in the network environment--so that I can access it via the virtual desktop. Central IT will not load Crystal for me because they say there is a licensing issue, since there are many users who could potentially access the Crystal Reports application if it is loaded. My goal is to be able to develop reports at home, run them as necessary during design phase, etc., not to share them via the network.

My questions are whether there are any methods that could limit access to the application only to me in the Citrix environment, e.g.:

1) some form of rights that could be limited to me? All CR users have to be given these rights in general with user name and password, but could there be an additional layer, e.g., a second level of password?

2) Any way to limit the use of the application to my drive?

3) Any other approaches to get access to CR via Citrix?

I don't have administrative rights to the server, by the way. I want to observe licensing rules obviously, but don't want to be limited because of the potential for someone else to use the application.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

-LB

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Why can't it be installed on your 'personal drive' - the same place you store your reports?





To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[lbass]

I guess I thought installing the application would entail loading certain things in the registry and other places on the server network that I don't have access/rights to. I suppose technically it's not my drive--it is a users drive, and the pathname shows "lbass on <directory path\H:\>. When I click on it, only my folders are displayed and the path now reads only H:\, but probably every other user saves documents on H:\ also, but I guess in folders(?) I can't see.

Am I wrong to think loading CR on this drive wouldn't be feasible? Do you think that if the application is loaded on my personal drive that others wouldn't be able to access it inadvertently, e.g., by double clicking on a report with the system searching and finding CR on my drive to open it? If that couldn't happen, the network people might be willing to load CR onto my personal "drive" for me.

Thanks for responding and any further thoughts you have on this.

-LB

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Actually Linda,I forgot about the DLLs - Sorry about that.

Can you map a drive to your stored reports and run your local copy of CR to execute them?

It would also seem that CR could be installed within the Citrix environment but have its executable's permissions restricted to your user account ( and the sys admins of course) - That way, if other users have the proper licenses, thay could be added to the allowed users as well.




To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[lbass]

Can you map a drive to your stored reports and run your local copy of CR to execute them?

Honestly, I don't have a clue about how to go about that, but I think that's the problem, that for security reasons we don't have that kind of capacity (might be wrong though, and I'll check with my local IT guy).

I'll ask about the permissions--thanks for confirming that that is a possible solution.

-LB

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
I think that the restricted permissions to the program method was how my old employer handled CR over Citrix.





To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[jlopeman]

In my past job where I was IT manager, I controlled this through Active Directory, Group Policy and Citrix.

For XenApps-
I created an AD OU for CR users, and then added the CR users to that OU. You can then install CR onto the Citrix server(s) and limit access to that application so that only the CRUsers OU can see the CR icon.

For virtual desktops-
Same as above, but create a group policy object (GPO) that blocks the execution of cr32.exe unless a member of the CRUsers OU.

This assumes you are in a Windows and Active Directory network.