Record and Replay Issues in Citrix Protocol of LoadRunner

I am going to brief you about the issues i have encountered while i tried to record citrix protocol in LoadRunner and its resolutions using LR 9.5 and LR 11. Let’s see them in detail.

Issues Encountered:

• Recording of the Application failed when the Citrix application was launched with Multi-Protocol Option [Web + Citrix_ICA Protocols]
• Replay of the Script failed to Launch the Application [Or to connect to the Citrix Application]
• Replay of the Script failed at different point of the script due to Co-Ordinates

Issues Description:

1)   Recording of the Application failed: [LR 9.5]

Recording of the Application failed when the Citrix application was launched with Multi Protocol Option [Web + Citrix_ICA Protocols]. We were able to record the web part of the flow, but once the Citrix Application was launched the tool [LR 9.52] was not able to record the flow and hence scripting the Citrix Application Workflow failed.

Resolution:

It was found that HP does NOT support any “Citrix WEB Clients” and so we were asked to remove the Web Client Plug in and Install an Online Plug in – The list of Citrix Clients supported by HP are listed under Section 3.1. The Client which was installed by us which rectified the issue was “Citrix XenApp Plugin for Hosted Apps”

[Can be downloaded at: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX118445 for which you should have a login credential to the Citrix site which can be obtained by registering yourself]

But then it was also suggested by HP to have the flow recorded and tested using LR 11 rather than 9.5 and so we went for the recording using LR 11. Recording of the Flow was also possible in LR 11 only when the LR 11 had the mandatory patches installed as per the list in Section 3.4

2)   Replay of the Script failed to launch the Application [Or to connect to the Citrix Application]

The entire Citrix workflow was recorded using LR 11 and on trying to replay the script, we encountered issues at the code snippet below

ctrx_nfuse_connect("https://myapps.mhf2.mhf.mhc/Citrix/XenApp/site/launch.ica?CTX_Application=Citrix.MPS.App.Xen5Farm.TM1%20S%26P%20-%20QA%20-%20FP3&CTX_Token=43657X2637DE72891&LaunchId=1300870075822", CTRX_LAST);

The above code is where the Citrix_ICA protocol starts and we were failing due to the ICA File not getting generated dynamically

Resolution:

The below points needs to be addressed to solve the issue above

1.    Ensure that the Session Token is CORRELATED – So the script looks as below

ctrx_nfuse_connect("https://myapps.mhf2.mhf.mhc/Citrix/XenApp/site/launch.ica?CTX_Application=Citrix.MPS.App.Xen5Farm.TM1%20S%26P%20-%20QA%20-%20FP3&CTX_Token={SessionToken}&LaunchId=1300870075822", CTRX_LAST);

The correlation has to happen just before logging in to the Citrix Interface

2.       During recording, ensure that the options are set as below

3)   Replay of the Script failed at different point of the script due to Co-Ordinates

Once the replay issue is fixed with respect to launching the application, various issues were faced at other places of the script. There were failures happening at codes mentioned below where the user performs activities like

a.   Mouse Click:  ctrx_mouse_click(43, 46, LEFT_BUTTON, 0, "Starting TM1 S&P - QA - FP3=snapshot2", CTRX_LAST);

b.    Check Points or Window Synchronizations: ctrx_sync_on_window("Security Warning", ACTIVATE, 314, 257, 397, 205, "snapshot1", CTRX_LAST);

These activities may end in failure when the recording Window size is set to a different one than the Window resolution of the Client Machine in which the script is being executed.

Resolution:

• To avoid this window size or resolution issue, ensure that in the Recording Options, under Citrix the Window size is set to the one as in Client Machine in which the script is being executed
• This would ensure that the Co-Ordinates being captured in the Citrix functions such as ctrx_mouse_click or ctrx_sync_on_window are all in sync with the co-ordinates of the client machine
• We had this set to 1024 X 768 for our recording