Comparison of Data Capture Strategies

Comparison of Data Capture Strategies

Although the automated method is accurate, fast, and does not inconvenience employees, there are a number of business characteristics that automated tools cannot identify. For example, what is the criticality of the user, will the user need to work offline and should access to the application be restricted due to security or licensing restrictions? Therefore, the recommended approach is to

use the automated method to identify technical characteristics and a questionnaire to identify the business characteristics. 

The User Segmentation and Link Apps to Users sections provide detailed information on the user and application characteristics that you will need to collect. 

Key results from the user data gathering exercise should be documented in the assess spreadsheet.

Citrix Consulting Tips for Success

1. Representative users – If you don’t have enough time, resources, or licenses to inventory every desktop in your organization, make sure that you pick a representative subset of users. For example, deploying an agent on every desktop in the HR department but missing out the sales and finance

departments will impact your results. Take time to ensure that you select a representative subset of users from every department and role within the organization. And remember, not all users within a single department will have the same requirements.

2. Check the data – When using an automated inventory tool, regularly check that the data has been successfully uploaded to the central database. There have been cases reported where insufficient space has been allocated to the central database resulting in several weeks of agent data being lost causing the project to be delayed.

3. Monitoring period – It is extremely important that the automated inventory tool monitors the desktops over a sufficient period of time. At the very least, monitor the desktops for a minimum of

one month; ideally monitor usage over periods of peak activity such as quarter end so that you have a good idea of average and peak application performance requirements. There may be situations where users only need access to a specific application during quarter end and unless you are running the automated inventory tool at this time you will not be aware of its usage.

4. Remember the plugins – Plugins are available for various applications, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook. For example Citrix ShareFile and e-mail archiving solutions are frequently implemented as plugins. To prevent critical functionality being omitted, plugins should be treated as applications during the application assessment.

5. Application dependencies – It is imperative that you understand all of the interactions between your applications. For example, there may be an application which requires Microsoft Word and

Excel be installed on the same system so that reports can be viewed. When it comes to the design phase of the project you will need to make sure that these applications are grouped together

appropriately.

6. Application consolidation – It may be tempting to skip through the application consolidation phase of the assessment, but time spent reducing the number of applications significantly reduces

complexity and time spent on the assessment and design phases of the project.

7. Application owners – To ensure that you don’t incorrectly categorize applications or remove an important application from your inventory, work closely with the various application owners during the Rationalization, Characteristics and Compatibility Steps.

8. Final check – Once the consolidated list of applications has been finalized, complete with characteristics and compatibility information it should be sent to the application owners for review to ensure that it is correct and no critical applications or information has been omitted.