A Work Around to fix the Audio Issue That NICE CX One Has With Citrix.
I started working for a new employer and when I was hired they told me that one of my responsibilities was to work with a platform called Citrix. For those who don’t know Citrix is a platform that provides the user with a Virtual Desktop, it will look the same as a normal computer desktop but virtual.
As I opened my Service Now queue only to see what types of Citrix issues people were having and I quickly noticed that the majority of the tickets were complaints about a program called CX One.
CX One is a platform that users can use to make and receive calls through the Internet. It’s really a soft phone where the user can use a Thin Client, Laptop or Desktop to make calls etc. it’s similar to Cisco Jabber.
Apparently they have been having issues for several months and the issue still persists. Meetings with NICE and Citrix people has come up with nothing and no resolution has been found at this time. Mind you we have been going back and forth with the vendors for several months and nothing.
Even if you do a search on CX-One there really isn’t a fix that I found that would take care of the audio issue they are having. Everyday searching trying to find a way to at least have an idea on why it happens resulted with no answers. Everyone is getting frustrated here at corporate and it’s getting more and more frustrating.
Many companies tend to use Citrix now even more being that many employees are now working from home and it helps the corporation keep control of their information since it’s inside the network and user will only need to use a Thin Client, which is just a dumb terminal that a user can use just like a normal Desktop and Laptop.
Thin Clients tend to be inexpensive than a normal Desktop Computer or Laptop. You can also use a Desktop computer if that’s what you have available and install a Citrix Receiver in order to access it. You can download the new version of Citrix Receiver here. Of course you are going to need a VPN connection from your employer in order for Citrix to work.
We were and still having audio issues with CX One where the user whenever they decided to use CX One the audio will cut off and the user could no longer hear any audio through their headset. It did not matter who was using it, as every home user was experiencing the same thing. It’s been two months since I have been here and have been pulling what little I have of my hair out trying to resolve the issue.
At first we would do the usual like replacing the users headsets, Thin Clients, Desktops and or Laptops, checked their Chrome settings to make sure the headset is the default audio device. We wouid even bounce the users from the servers they were on through Xen Center hoping that wound fix the issue and at times it would for a little bit then the issue will happen again.
Here in corporate we use two types of Citrix one is XA which works for Thin Clients and the other connection is XD which is used for Laptops and Desktops. Both work well for the most part with many of the software the Work at Home users use but when they try to use Nice CX One on XD the audio quickly starts to act up.
I was frustrated thinking on how we can resolve this issue so that users stop getting their CX One audio cut off then it hit me! Since the users have Citrix receiver they can also have more than one Citrix connection up at the same time. So why not open up both an XA connection and a XD connection and have the user use both. I set up the user to use CX One on XA so that it’s the only thing running on that connection and everything else that the user uses can be used on XD.
After I did this and had the user do a few test calls and had no issues with the audio cutting off. It looks like this way might be used as a work around rather than an actual resolution for now. Also a new update, it could also be that your Citrix network may need to be update to the latest version. If it’s not as we all know Citrix will start to act strange and problematic. The team updated the XA version and the audio issue was no longer a problem. Also just a heads up make sure you check the Users Upload Speed on the Internet as sometimes this could also be a problem. We found out that when users have low upload speeds Citrix becomes fidgety wiht their Audio. We have a user who was having constant problems with her CX-One audio while on Citrix and once she updated her Internet to have higher upload speeds her CX-One audio issue went away. For now what seems to be working is the work around I just spoke about earlier.
In the end it’s not a resolution but at least it’s a workaround until you update all the Citrix equipment with the same update. Unfortunately, CX One was not much help with this at the time of this issue but since then I think they updated their software so we will see. Once we find a permanent solution I will update this article.
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Hope this works for you!
