Howto:Softwarephone and terminal server enviroment or thin clients

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Having innovaphone softwarephone running on thin clients

Applies To

This information applies to

  • innovaphone SoftwarePhone
  • innovaphone myApps-SoftphoneApp

More Information

General informations about thin clients and Client/Server

Problem Details

Setup of a thin client environment implies to have all functionalities at the server-side and just access them for use via the thin-client.

Thin clients would not keep any locally installed applications.

In the case of using audio-applications and -devices such as e.g. softwarephone/myApps-SoftphoneApp and USB-headsets following problem occurs:

  • As the local thin-client sound card is not in use, connecting a USB Headset to the server (in the server room) and passing the USB cable to the local workplace of course is not practicable.
  • Thin client workers want to use their own headset connected to the thin client.

For this to work, use of a local sound card for audio replay is required. As the whole user interface (e.g Windows and Applications) is running on the server, a USB sound proxy (Client Audio Mapping in Citrix Speak) must be used:

Headset <--USB--> Thin Client (PC) <---- TCP/IP -------> Server (TS/Citrix Metaframe)

The thin client then will send USB sound data as uncompressed audio to the Server where softwarephone/myApps-SoftphoneApp running.

Audio data will be processed at the server, compressed and sent back to client via IP.

This solution is wasting bandwidth and creating delay (having also an extra delay for sending data between the thin client and the server).

Conclusion

To make audio-applications and devices work in a thin client environment with Windows operating system, the recommendation is to operate it locally at the thin-client.

  • For the softwarephone, this implies to install it locally and control it from the Citrix/Terminal-Server using myPBX or myAPPs-PhoneApp.
  • Starting with 13r3, the myApps-SoftphoneApp can be controlled by the rccAPP
  • 14r1 introduces the MyApps Plugin for Virtual Desktops - the recommended solution for a thin client with Windows operating system
  • As an alternative, IP-deskphones can be used instead of the locally installed softwarephone or myApps-SoftphoneApp.

Additional hints

When starting the myApps-Windows-Client in the Terminal-Server, we recommend to disable the Headset-SDKs using DISABLEHEADSETS - since the headset control will be done also locally at the softwarephone.

Also check the known issues for TerminalServer or Citrix entries.

Known Problems

Be aware, that parallel operation of Softwarephone and myAPPs at the same host will not work due to conflicting audio device resource allocation. In case of a already running myAPPs, Softwarephone will not be started.

Since the Windows process don't even start, there is no possibility to solve this in the softwarephone/myApps configuration.

To solve this issue, just delay the autostart of myApps in the Windows configuration, so softwarephone is started before myApps.