Method Community

Does anyone have experience using Method for QuickBooks installed in a Citrix environment.

Thanks,

Beth

Hey Beth,

We currently do not support any technical troubleshooting on Citrix/Terminal Servers.

Method will work on these systems, but does require a lot of configuration that we cannot provide.

The only Citrix and Terminal Server systems that we do supported are InsynQ and Right Networks. 

Hope this helps!

 Hi Ryan,

 Thanks for your reply.  I am in customer Method set-up opportunity where their QuickBooks is hosted in an environment that is Citrix but not with the mentionned providers.    I will not require technical assistance from your team, I do have an IT specialist that I can work with.  Is there anything written by Method that would atleast start an outside technical support person on the right road to strategic setup in a Citrix enviroment?   This may be a large opportunity where there are other QuickBooks users I can market to that host in this environment.

Thanks!

 Hey Beth,

We do not have any documentation that is meant to get users started with a Citrix/Terminal Server setup. What we recommend is that you follow the normal installation instructions located in Method. Once you have this done, you can have your IT specialist start to troubleshoot any problems as they start to show. However, it is possible to get this type of setup working error free.

Due to the unique setup of each Citrix/Terminal server, we cannot accurately compile an installation document.

If you cannot locate your Installation steps, please follow the steps below.

Step 1. Log into your account and go to the Quickbooks > Synchronize.

Step 2. At the top of this screen select "Show installation steps".

Step 3. Follow the on screen instructions.

Hope this helps!

 Hey Beth,

If you can send me your email address, we do have a troubleshooting guide for desktop installations. You can use this to help you troubleshoot your setup.

This will be made available for everyone on our website soon.

Beth,

This is a very interesting question, and I think important also.

As an IT infrastructure manager I had staff supporting large Citrix farm environments and as a small business owner I've used Terminal Services on Windows Server 2003 to host Quickbooks.

Terminal Services for Quickbooks worked well except the Quickbooks licensing system does not explicity support Terminal Services access for multiple users.  I was able to get it to work, but eventually gave up when trying to upgrade Quickbooks and needing to re-activate licenses, etc.

Even though Quickbooks does support a Client/Server type architecture, their documentation and support people assume the Clients will always be on a PC, instead of being Virtual Clients.  So, I was never able to find good documentation and I'm not sure the licensing system didn't cripple this architecture in some versions of Quickbooks.

The good news, I think, is that in all our work hosting literally dozens of applications on Citrix Farms, there was always a way to "trick" the application software into thinking it was running on client PC's, separate Client/Server machines, etc.  The Citrix administrator is typically well versed in setting up config files for the Client Session environment to fake out the application software.  I think in general more difficult applications ran better when Citrix was virtualizing the entire Desktop for the user instead of just the application.  When Citrix virtualizes the entire desktop more environment variables and attributes related to printing, drive mappings, etc. get virtualized automatically.  This might be obsolete thinking though.

From what I can determine, Method has a fairly simple architecture consisting of 1) the Browser based application and 2) the Synch Engine.  Hosting the Browser Session successfully on Citrix should just require making sure the Java or ActiveX plugins etc. are available to the Broswer and tweaking the security settings of the Citrix Server hosted browser to allow Method to do it's thing.  As long as you don't have an overly restrictive corporate security policy, the server admin should be able able to keep the browser config flexible enough for Method and it's needs for client side browser plug ins, etc.

I think the key to a successful installation of Method in a Citrix Environment is the configuration of the Method Synch Engine.  I think that typically Method assumes you will have a Synch Engine client installed on each client PC such that there is a one for one relationship between Synch Engines and Browser Sessions.  I am not sure, but I think this is recommended since you want to see any changes to the Method data tables immediately updated to the Quickbooks file in case a user is switching back and forth or if there are data table race conditions.  For example there may be cases where Quickbooks must complete the financial posting of data to create a new journal entry that will then upload to the Method tables for further processing.

I am not sure how Quickbooks handles user access licensing for the Synch Engine.  When you allow the Synch Engine access to the QB file, does QB see each listener as one user, or is it granted as an application without counting number of users.  It appears like it is granted as an application, but I'm not sure.

So, you might need to have the Synch Engine installed for each Citrix Session just as each Citrix Session would need the same Browser configuration.  This might need to be done from within each named Method Users Citrix Session for Method to install and configure the Synch Engine to that particular users Method User account.  Or, it might be that the Synch Engine is not Method User Login dependent and the Citrix Administrator can install it for all users and the Synch Engine only comes alive when activated by the Browser session or from within the users Citrix Session.

Although I have not been able to confirm this with Method, and it might be dis-recommended, I thought there might be an opportunity to setup a single Method Synch Engine on a Server to cut down on network traffic to the server and Internet connection bandwidth.  I don't know, but I am assuming that multiple users could potentially generate redundant synching operations.  I'm not sure how all that works though and I think Method is continually innovating the Synch algorythm's to minimize any potential performance issues.

Anyway, I am a huge Citrix/Terminal Services fan and Citrix has a huge support base for hosting any application.  It's been a while since I had experience with it, but even back in the day we always found a way to host the application.  The TS protocol is very efficent and makes it much easier to provide support for staff working from home over various bandwidth connections.

Keep us informed.

Cheers,

James

 James,

 Thank you so much for your generous reply and the time you took to share your experience, this will be helpful.  I will keep you  informed as I am confident I can make this work.  This is a great opportunity for the customer I am setting up with Method but also to his remote accounting provider.  I hope to lead the way to other customers being able to move onto Method and have a great outsourced bookkeeping back office too too.  

-Beth

Hi Beth and James,

I wanted to just add in some of my own, personal feedback, with my experiences with Citrix and Terminal Servers.  I actually helped Right Networks and Insynq, both of which we are partners with, to get Method setup and installed on their environment.  While I'd love to say that our level of involvement during the process was minimal, it wasn't.  It was a very long process and one that involved a lot of back and fourth dialog.  Not the typical install that's for sure. We invested the time though knowing that it would benefit the entire Method Community with being able to use a hosted QB environment.

Both of these environments brought their own challenges and configuration issues.  These issues came up with the actual sync engine only and had nothing to do with the browser.  The beauty of Method being web based is that you don't have to deal with installing anything as long as you have a browser that we support (Firefox or IE).  The sync engine issues all surrounded permissions with opening the sync engine properly and secondly with QuickBooks being able to open Method correctly.  QuickBooks already isn't the biggest fan of being installed on these environments so when you throw Method into the mix and us using features like COM abilities in QB(to open Method automatically) it starts to get a bit ugly.  Both RN and Insynq had their admins work through several permission problems, both of which were totally different for both setups.  Be aware of this as you walk into doing such a setup.  Because each environment like this can be so different based on the permissions, roaming profiles and architecture it is pretty far away from the normal installation a Method user would follow.  For this reason, we also don't support it for end users.

Method will work in these environments and both our partners have set this up successfully.  In fact one of our other silent partners also got this setup in a much larger environment but I know the administrators had to do a lot of leg work with permissions to get this going.  Use the guide the Ryan suggested as it does point out a lot of standard areas within Method that need to be setup correctly.  If these aren't setup the right way in your environment, you might run into trouble.

- Danny

Good to know.  Thanks Danny.

Without more explicit support from Intuit for QB on TS, it would appear a bit dicey for Method to support this method of install, although I am guessing as a COM object subscriber not server, the Method Synch is certainly TS session friendly, even if the licensing model, authentication and permission models in QB are not.

At least the admins know they're in for a challenge and have some ideas where to look.  At this point at least we all know that you need to be a TS, Citrix, or VM machine guru who know's how to work through thorny authentication, environment, and permission issues.

Personally, it sounds like I'm better off using fat clients in my SB environment.  With only a few users, not much to gain using TS except for remote admin.  If I install one QB client with license and one Method User on a Win 2003 server, I don't expect problems with using the Server TS sessions.  Except for the security, they work very much like the local console session.

Thanks for informing the level of effort required to host multiple users on Citrix.

Cheers,

James