Enable or disable recording

You install the Session Recording Agent on multi-session OS VDAs for which you want to record sessions. Within each Agent is a setting that enables recording for the VDA on which it is installed. After recording is enabled, Session Recording evaluates the active recording policy that determines which sessions are recorded.

When you install the Session Recording Agent, recording is enabled. We recommend that you disable Session Recording on VDAs that are not recorded because they experience a small impact on performance, even if no recording takes place.  

Enable or disable recording on a VDA

1. Log on to the server where the Session Recording Agent is installed.
2. From the Start menu, choose Session Recording Agent Properties.
3. Under Session Recording, select or clear the Enable session recording for this VDA machine check box to specify whether sessions can be recorded for this VDA.
4. When prompted, restart the Session Recording Agent Service to accept the change.

Note:

When you install Session Recording, the active policy is Do not record (no sessions are recorded on any server). To begin recording, use the Session Recording Policy Console to activate a different policy.

Enable custom event recording

Session Recording allows you to use third-party applications to insert custom data, known as events, to recorded sessions. These events appear when the session is viewed using the Session Recording Player. They are part of the recorded session file and cannot be modified after the session is recorded.

For example, an event might contain the following text: “User opened a browser.” Each time a user opens a browser during a session that is being recorded, the text is inserted to the recording at that point. When the session is played using the Session Recording Player, the viewer can locate and count the times that the user opened a browser by noting the number of markers that appear in the Events and Bookmarks list in the Session Recording Player.

To insert custom events to recordings on a server:

• Use Session Recording Agent Properties to enable a setting on each server where you want to insert custom events. Enable each server separately. You cannot globally enable all servers in a site.
• Write applications built on the Event API that runs within each user’s Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops session (to inject the data into the recording).

The Session Recording installation includes an event recording COM application (API) that allows you to insert text from third-party applications to a recording. You can use the API from many programming languages including Visual Basic, C++, or C#. For more information, see the Knowledge Center article CTX226844. The Session Recording Event API .dll is installed as part of the Session Recording installation. You can find it at C:\Program Files\Citrix\SessionRecording\Agent\Bin\Interop.UserApi.dll.

To enable custom event recording on a server, do the following:

1. Log on to the server where the Session Recording Agent is installed.
2. From the Start menu, choose Session Recording Agent Properties.
3. In Session Recording Agent Properties, click the Recording tab.
4. Under Custom event recording, select the Allow third party applications to record custom data on this server check box.