What should the next Dazzle offer?

The enterprise application store? Really?

Citrix calls Dazzle, it’s self-service “iTunes”-style appstore for your published applications, an “enterprise application store” .

Is that accurate though?

In reality, it’s PNAgent  (or the XenApp Online Plug-in for those new to all this) with some flash animation and freedom as to what you add to your start menu.

Lets look at what Dazzle currently does, or doesn’t do:

• There is no single-sign on. You are prompted to re-enter your desktop credentials when you launch it. A real pain.
• It only gives you what you already have access to via your AD group memberships.
• It only provides access to XenApp/XenDesktop hosted applications or desktops. It doesn’t integrate with other distribution mechanisms (e.g. SCCM) to allow on-demand deployments of other applications (not all apps can be streamed after all)
• If you want something new, you’ve still got to make a call to the help desk, who then initiate whatever approval workflow is in place (outside of Dazzle)

At Synergy earlier this year, Citrix announced that the next version of Dazzle with have more workflow capabilities.

Dazzle v.next – the story so far

What have Citrix told us so far?

• Some kind of integration with Workflow Studio (is this just going to be adding/removing users to AD groups?). Hmm..does anyone actually use Workflow Studio?
• Managerial approval for application access requests
• Mac support
• Application searching
• FAQ support (hooking into your help desk knowledge base of application problems so users can find the answer themselves before calling?)

What should Dazzle offer?

Here is my “Dazzling” shopping list:

• Allow an administrator to define a list of available applications
• Define how a user gains access to them (all the time, by instant approval, by managerial approval)
• Provide reports on who has access to what, and who uses what (some kind of Edgesight integration for reporting?)
• Provide approval mechanisms via email and web
• Single sign-on
• Integrate with SCCM for on-demand deployment of MSIs and access to locally-installed applications in the same manner

What would you like to see in the next release of Dazzle? Comment away…