March 5, 2024

Enhance Your Power Apps Security: Mastering Monitoring and Logging for Ultimate Protection

Monitoring user actions and setting up comprehensive logging mechanisms are crucial for detecting and responding to potential security incidents. This includes auditing user activities within your […]
February 13, 2024

Mastering role-based access control (RBAC) in Power Apps for security and efficiency.

Role-based Access Control (RBAC) is a critical security feature in Power Apps that allows you to define user roles and permissions within your applications. This ensures […]
January 29, 2024

Fortify Your Power Apps: Mastering Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policies for Optimal Data Security

Power Apps brings the prowess of app development to your fingertips, yet it also bears the onus of data security. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies are […]
November 2, 2023
factors that can make or break your power apps project

Critical factors that can make or break the success of your Microsoft Power Apps project

Microsoft Power Apps has emerged as a transformative tool, allowing businesses to craft custom applications tailored to their specific needs. However, like any technology, the success […]
September 21, 2023

Keeping your team on track: Getting to grips with Microsoft Viva Goals

By Jason Poyner It’s the challenge that organisations big and small alike face – drawing that link between big picture goals and the day to day […]
August 30, 2023

Deptive’s approach to fostering long-term customer success

By Jason Barlow, Lead Customer Success Manager, Deptive. After lengthy stints at IBM and Vodafone in a range of account manager and service and product delivery […]
July 19, 2023

Mid-year trends: Al everywhere, cloud data push and Power Apps galore

It feels like 2023 is flying by and customers and partners I talk to every day laugh in weary agreement when I mention that. We are […]
May 24, 2023

The real answer to the tech talent shortage is right in front of us.

Since well before the Covid-19 pandemic closed our borders, we’ve heard the same refrain from the tech sector – there just aren’t enough skilled people to […]
May 5, 2023

Azure is going local: Time to think about how you can benefit

Many organisations across Aotearoa are already realising the benefits of the public cloud, having adopted the likes of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform service, which is currently […]
December 19, 2022

2022 in review: Trust, understanding and strong partnerships are key

By Daniel Almond, General Manager, Deptive Someone famous once said that it is only when everything is uncertain that what is really important becomes clear. With […]
August 29, 2022

Why working at Deptive is good for my soul

The Great Regeneration: Why working at Deptive is good for my soul By Louise Heeney We heard a lot during the pandemic about the Great Resignation, […]
July 26, 2022

Inspire 2022: Microsoft doubles down on supporting the distributed workplace

By Jason McDougall, Modern Workplace Consultant, Deptive  Microsoft Inspire 2022 was a relatively low-key and virtual affair this year.   But the key theme became clear to […]
May 4, 2022

Discover the power of Microsoft Power Apps – Deptive webinar replay

Microsoft’s Power Apps has gained significant traction in recent years, particularly as the pandemic required organisations to quickly develop new web and mobile applications and automate cumbersome business processes.
December 6, 2021

Our ongoing Live Well journey: Five ways we maintain our work-life balance

As a company with most of our staff based in Auckland, the last couple of months have been coloured by the limitations of living in lockdown.
November 17, 2021

Deptive appoints General Manager as it gears up for accelerating growth

Auckland-based Digital workspace specialist Deptive has promoted Daniel Almond to the new role of General Manager as it looks to capitalise on the booming demand for cloud-enabled work and collaboration platforms.
October 29, 2021

What Microsoft’s own research tells us about the realities of remote work

As country after country went into lockdown last year, the world’s largest software company faced its own monumental challenge - how to shift a large portion of its 180,000 employees to remote working.
August 6, 2021

Windows 365 – what having a PC in the cloud means for you

Windows 365 - what having a PC in the cloud means for you. Microsoft recently unveiled Windows 365 Cloud PC, a new software as a service product that will deliver the Windows operating system via a simple web browser.
July 9, 2021

Digital workplace change requires the personal touch

In this Q&A, Fidelity Life’s Chief Technology Officer, Dan Wilkinson, reflects on the changes the company has gone through to enable a better digital workplace experience for its more than 300 staff.
May 28, 2021

The time-saving promise of PowerApps

Power Apps can automate mundane processes and make you more productive in the process. Here’s Deptive’s top tips to get the most out of this powerful platform.
March 25, 2021

Deptive’s team’s desire to ‘live well’

A couple of years ago, we embarked on an exercise at Deptive to clarify what our values as a company were. Together, we came up with lots of great ideas. We all agreed we had a culture that values hard work, honesty and accountability - we like to get sh*t done!
February 9, 2021

Rethinking Your Digital Workspace

In 2020, the nature of work changed forever. The pandemic forced us into home offices, up-ended our usual ways of collaborating and required a level of flexibility and trust that existed in few workplaces previously.
December 10, 2020

Deptive’s Modern Workplace Practice

A track record of enabling digital transformation and a deep experience of Microsoft’s productivity and collaboration applications will underpin a new Modern Workplace practice at digital workspace specialist, Deptive.
November 20, 2020

The new normal of hybrid working – five tips to make this way of working sustainably

We are racing towards the end of the year, summer is coming and so too it seems maybe a vaccine that will help us put Covid-19 behind us once and for all. But the huge shift to remote working the pandemic lockdowns and social distancing spurred all over the world isn’t reversing itself any time soon.
July 19, 2020

Will Microsoft Universal Print fix cloud printing?

The paperless office has been promised for decades but still hasn’t arrived. True, mankind’s longest-standing medium for recording information was never going to be phased out overnight. But in 2020 we’re still waiting and still printing.
June 23, 2020

4 essential steps to boosting remote employee engagement

After weeks of working from their bedrooms, kitchens and lounges – all the while doing their best to maintain their productivity – employees are now gradually returning to the office.
May 20, 2020

How Microsoft Teams can help improve collaboration in uncertain times

Over the past 20 years, the technology landscape has completely transformed. We’ve seen the emergence of the cloud, the digital workspace, and the increasing prevalence of a subscription-based model of software: software-as-a-service (SaaS).
April 27, 2020

Have you got the Windows-as-a-service mindset?

Over the past 20 years, the technology landscape has completely transformed. We’ve seen the emergence of the cloud, the digital workspace, and the increasing prevalence of a subscription-based model of software: software-as-a-service (SaaS).
April 17, 2020

Discovering the power of Microsoft Power Platform with Dona Sarkar

Dona is now the principal advocate for the Microsoft Power Platform, which empowers non-tech people to build apps and solutions to solve their everyday work problems. She was generous enough to share her time and expertise with us in a webinar recently.
March 29, 2020

The democratisation of app development

People know that I’m passionate about improving employee experience, so when I was selected to present at the ALGIM Annual Conference in 2019, it’s no surprise that I chose to speak about creating an awesome employee experience.
March 19, 2020

Business continuity: Planning your remote working needs

Over the past week, we've had an influx of people contacting us to urgently discuss how to meet their business continuity (BCP) needs.
March 19, 2020

The 4 pillars of digital workspace cybersecurity

Companies are investing billions of dollars in cybersecurity every year. According to IDC, worldwide spending on security solutions is forecasted to total USD $133.8 billion in 2022.
January 15, 2020

Deptive’s Founder & CEO at ALGIM 2019

People know that I’m passionate about improving employee experience, so when I was selected to present at the ALGIM Annual Conference in 2019, it’s no surprise that I chose to speak about creating an awesome employee experience.
November 29, 2019

Implementing change and managing devices: An insider’s guide to Microsoft Ignite

Deptive Solutions Consultant Paul Warren is our resident Microsoft expert – and this year saw him speak not once, not twice, but FOUR times at Microsoft’s […]
August 30, 2019

Defining the digital workspace

What on earth is a digital workspace? Us IT people love our buzz words: cloud, blockchain, SaaS, big data, IoT… But even some IT people are […]
August 16, 2019

Building high performing teams: Starting your Microsoft Teams adoption

Every good organisation knows that its people are its biggest strength – and that building strong teams is vital to building a strong business. The hard […]
June 19, 2019

Windows Autopilot: Stop creating desktop images and turn on Autopilot

We’re constantly hearing from CIOs that they want their team to spend more time with the people in the business – understanding their needs, their challenges, […]
May 20, 2019

How to write a great digital workspace RFP and achieve positive change

At Deptive, we like to surround ourselves with others who are experts in their fields. One of those experts is Jits Doolabh from Fr@nk, who help […]
April 15, 2019

Printing in the modern workplace

I never thought the day would come when I’d be excited to speak about printing, or even be speaking about printing at all – and yet […]
March 20, 2019

Using an eXperience Level Agreement to improve employee experience

Us IT people sure love our TLAs: CPU, DNS, LAN, WAN, SLA… The list goes on! But there’s one new acronym that’s wormed its way into […]
March 4, 2019

The core tenets of a successful digital workspace

I speak about digital workspaces a lot. But when sitting down to craft this blog, I was curious to know how other people define a digital […]
February 15, 2019

What are you doing to create an awesome employee experience?

What is a company without its people? If you’re part of a great company, look around – you’re probably surrounded by great people. The two go […]
July 11, 2018

The modern workplace: the right technology for your diverse workforce

The concept of working productively from anywhere and on any device is becoming increasingly popular – but that’s not all that the modern workplace is.
April 30, 2018

Finding ‘Who’ you need: The newest Microsoft Teams app making it easy

A pretty basic need of organisations (especially large ones) is for employees to be able to find others in the organisation. Whether it’s looking for who […]
October 23, 2017

How to gain total visibility and better insights into your IT infrastructure

Having visibility over your all IT environments, from desktop virtualisation to web apps to storage and networks, is vital for every IT team. Yet so many […]
October 16, 2017

How to choose the right visibility tools – a comparison

We’ve seen already the impact that low visibility can have on a business – in terms of the frustration for the end user, time and effort […]
October 9, 2017

Why is low visibility a problem?

What visibility do you have into your IT environments? When a user calls up your IT team with an issue logging into their remote desktop, can […]
September 28, 2017

Supercharge Windows 10 Virtual Desktops, with virtual GPU

Hear how NVIDIA Grid benefits both high-end GPU intensive virtual desktop workloads, along with the benefits to standard task and knowledge workers. Now anything you need […]
September 10, 2017

What’s coming next for ultra-low cost thin client computing?

In this sneak-peak interview, Roger Cao – Director of Solutions Development, Citrix reveals how a Raspberry Pi with built-in Bluetooth beacon, Citrix Receiver and HDX will give us location-aware power computing that’s good for […]
September 10, 2017

End-to-end visibility of Enterprise Applications

If there’s a problem, how much time do you spend locating the route cause? How much visibility do you have of your end user experience? In […]
August 10, 2017

Samsung DeX – Can your phone replace your laptop?

Is this a gimmick, or the future of personal computing? Deptive Technical Director, Jason Poyner gets hands-on with the Samsung DeX at Citrix Synergy 2017. This […]
May 31, 2016

Maximising value from your Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop licenses

Jason Poyner, Technical Director, Deptive. Great, you’re an existing Citrix customer. Pat yourself on the back for your wise purchasing decision. You’ve got a bunch of […]
April 25, 2016

Considerations and Best Practice for a BYOD Policy

Jason Poyner, Technical Director, Deptive While not every organisation has a formal BYOD programme, every organisation should develop policies regarding the use of personal devices for […]
March 23, 2016

Desktop Virtualisation – Viable for New Zealand Businesses?

Jason Poyner, Technical Director, Deptive These days I find most CIOs are familiar with the benefits of desktop virtualisation (whether VDI, or otherwise), but the costs […]
March 11, 2016

What is Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) and why should you use it?

Jason Poyner, Technical Director, Deptive Citrix Provisioning Services (PVS) allows you to have a single instance image management of your XenApp and/or XenDesktop VMs – otherwise known […]
September 28, 2015

Deptive achieves Citrix Virtualisation Specialist status

Update 11 November 2015: Today, Citrix have recognised Deptive’s continued business growth and customer success by awarding them with Solution Advisor Gold Partner status. This accolade comes hot […]
September 18, 2015

Why do they hate Citrix?

Jason Poyner, Technical Director, Deptive Given my position, I’m used to hearing great feedback from Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop users, but it’s true to say myself and the […]
September 24, 2014

Customise NetScaler Gateway user interface on a per vServer basis

The following guide provides details on how to create customised logon page on the same NetScaler for different NetScaler Gateway virtual servers. Citrix currently do not […]
August 27, 2014

Citrix Insight Services.

Citrix Insight Services is a Citrix initiative which focuses on simplifying the support of Citrix environments. Citrix has developed tools and automated online analysis capabilities to […]
August 20, 2014

NetScaler Block URLs

When deploying a NetScaler virtual load balancer to provide reverse proxy access to a web servers, you may have a requirement to block certain URLs being […]
August 12, 2014

Citrix NetScaler the networking Swiss Army knife

Citrix NetScaler is a leading and feature rich Application Delivery Controller (ADC). A recent presentation from Citrix showed the NetScaler as a Swiss Army knife which […]
March 20, 2014

30 x IOPS with Provisioning Services RAM cache

I’m currently working with a client to determine the potential scope of a virtual desktop deployment, and performing an infrastructure readiness assessment. While some additional compute […]
June 27, 2013

Atlantis ILIO: The desktop virtualisation “secret sauce”

As all of you with years (decades??) of IT experience know, users are quick to vocalise any negative experience, but providing positive feedback can be like […]
March 19, 2013

XenApp Farm Health Check v2

My original XenApp Farm Health Check has had great feedback, and thanks to all of you who have modified the script and supplied me with the […]
December 7, 2012

Citrix StoreFront SQL database creation script

Citrix StoreFront will become the standard client access point for XenApp & XenDesktop over the next couple of years replacing the venerable Citrix Web Interface. The […]
December 2, 2012

Citrix NetScaler or F5?

This year I have seen a large increase in the number of Citrix NetScaler projects we have been engaged on. Citrix NetScaler is a proven and […]
November 12, 2012

5 Enterprise Alternatives to Dropbox

CIO.com has published a great overview of 5 enterprise alternatives to Dropbox, including Citrix ShareFile.
October 22, 2012

Zen: Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop become one

The rumour that Citrix will combine their XenApp and XenDesktop products into a single product (code named Excalibur) has been announced at Citrix Synergy Barcelona, and […]
October 22, 2012

Cisco recommend Citrix NetScaler

Citrix and Cisco have extended their existing partnership and as a result the Cisco ACE range will be phased out with Cisco now recommending Citrix NetScaler […]
September 26, 2012

UPDATE: How to determine Client IP Address in XenApp 6.5

Thanks to a very helpful comment from Kahless on my previous post on this topic, I have developed a new method of obtaining the client IP […]
July 31, 2012

Citrix CloudGateway 2.0: Enable BYOD and Enterprise Mobility

Citrix have this morning released CloudGateway 2.0 which has some exciting new features. I was so keen to see the new CloudGateway feature I even got […]
May 27, 2012

XenApp Farm Health Report

UPDATE: Version 2 of this script has been released I recently created a Powershell script to report on several key items in a XenApp 6.x farm […]
May 21, 2012

Export SSL certificate from Access Gateway 5

We recently set up a Citrix Access Gateway 5 VPX appliance for a client and created the CSR from the Access Gateway. We then needed to […]
April 14, 2012

Citrix XenApp Virtualization Best Practice – Rule #1

Virtualizing XenApp servers is now the norm. All the standard benefits of general server virtualisation apply to XenApp server consolidation, however the consolidation ratio of XenApp […]
March 18, 2012

Logoff scripts not running with XenApp or RDS published apps

I have had a long couple of weeks looking into an issue where logoff scripts do not run with XenApp 6.5 published applications or with Windows […]
March 12, 2012

Remote Assistance PowerShell GUI for XenApp

Shadowing to or from multi-monitor desktops is broken in Windows Server 2008 R2, which means Citrix XenApp 6.x. Nothing new here, I read about this on […]
March 8, 2012

Display the server name on Citrix Web Interface

When load balancing Citrix Web Interface servers a useful tweak is to display the Web Interface server in small text on the web page. This assists […]
February 1, 2012

Flight Centre Desktop Virtualisation enables Business Continuity

Deptive designed and implemented the Citrix XenApp 6 desktop virtualisation solution for Flight Centre New Zealand in late 2010. An article has recently been published by […]
November 9, 2011

Enable the Citrix Desktop Viewer with XenApp

  The Citrix Desktop Viewer toolbar if officially supported with XenDesktop only, but also works with XenApp. The Desktop Viewer is enabled on the each Web […]
October 24, 2011

How to determine the client IP address in XenApp 6

26 Sep 2012: See my updated method here. I have been modifying a client’s 2500 line VBScript login script recently (what a beast!) and had to […]
August 10, 2011

Citrix acquires RingCube

Citrix have just announced their acquisition of RingCube, it’s been an active few months for Citrix with their recent acquisition of Kaviza. RingCube’s vDesk product fits […]
July 11, 2011

Stress testing print drivers on XenApp

While dodgy print drivers no longer often cause a BSOD, they are still an on-going source of issues on Citrix XenApp farms, namely print spooler crashes […]
June 22, 2011

Recommended XenApp 6 Hotfixes

I am a huge fan of XenApp 6, but XenApp 6 does have more than it’s fair share of bugs. Citrix have published a list of […]
June 1, 2011

Citrix Provisioning Services 5.6 Best Practice

Citrix have released an awesome whitepaper that is a must read for anyone implementing PVS. Check it out here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127549     And some “PVS secrets” […]
May 31, 2011

Faulting module: svchost.exe_gpsvc

A Group Policy problem on XenApp servers is a high visibility issue so I was not happy to see this error in the system log:The Group […]
May 27, 2011

Configuring Windows Search for XenApp 6

Windows Search is enabled on XenApp 6 Windows 2008 R2 servers by installing the File Server > Windows Search Service role. Once the Windows Search Service […]
May 17, 2011

McAfee MOVE AntiVirus for VDI

I was talking to Roly from MPA last week and he mentioned McAfee’s MOVE AntiVirus which is designed for VDI environments. The key point which grabbed […]
May 1, 2011

Script to install all print drivers from a print server

I was just preparing to write a PowerShell script to connect to a print server, enumerate all the shared printers and connect to each one which […]
April 20, 2011

Configuring Citrix UPM to only include specified items

Citrix User Profile Manager (UPM) is designed to be inclusive. By this I mean it will include all changes in a users profile (file system and […]
April 19, 2011

STOP 0x00000035 NO_MORE_IRP_STACK_LOCATIONS error when shadowing on XenApp 6

This issue started occurring when testing a newly build XenApp 6 server. When shadowing a user from this newly built XenApp 6 server the newly built […]
April 19, 2011

Repurposing Win XP desktops as thin clients

Repurposed PCs deliver Windows 7-like experience using XenApp Hosted Shared Desktops This excellent Citrix Community blog details how to turn old Win XP desktops into Desktop […]
April 18, 2011

HP BiDi Channel Components Installer error

There has been an issue with the HP bi-directional (BiDi) component for some years where the MSI installer tries to run each time a user logs […]
April 17, 2011

Faulting application name: svchost.exe, Faulting module name: scardhook64.dll

We were seeing these errors on a XenApp 6 farm: Faulting application name: svchost.exe, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bc3c1 Faulting module name: scardhook64.dll, version: 6.0.0.10226, time […]
April 17, 2011

Easily find installed hotfixes with PowerShell

I {heart} PowerShell. Need to find out if a particular hotfix is installed? Just run this command, substituting the KBxxxxx number for the hotfix you want […]
October 29, 2010

Windows 2008 R2 scripting: lessons learnt

My scripting plans were foiled twice this week on Windows 2008 R2. I have implemented a VBScript XenApp reboot script for several years now on several […]
October 29, 2010

XenServer Snapshot based Backup

If you are looking to do snapshot based VM backups in a XenServer environment then check out this collection of scripts:VBScript methodPerl script methodAndy Burton’s XenServer […]
September 29, 2010

Disabling/hiding Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 libraries

I was looking for this info a few weeks ago while locking down a XenApp 6 published desktop, but couldn’t find it then. To hide a […]
August 30, 2010

XenApp 6 command line configuration

My previous blog entry covered installing XenApp 6 from the command line. Installing XenApp 6 from the command line does not join your server to the […]
August 23, 2010

XenApp 6 command line installation

I’m just starting my first XenApp 6 install and I like what I see so far. This is the first major change to XenApp in several […]
August 23, 2010

XenServer VM poor network performance

In a recent project we were seeing very slow printing on the new Windows 2003 print server VMs created on XenServer. Some print jobs were taking […]
March 8, 2010

How to disable the “Print Dialog” window with XenApp plugin for Mac

I have a client using some Apple Macs to connect to a Citrix XenApp farm. All was working except an annoying “print dialog” pop-up window whenever […]

Contact Deptive


Location
Deptive - Commercial Bay
11-19 Customs Street West St
Commercial Bay Tower, Level 17, Room 1715
Auckland 1010
We also have a virtual office in Wellington.

Contact Details

0800 000 141

Postal Address
PO Box 34797,
Birkenhead, Auckland 0746