Navigate the micro app builder for Citrix Workspace
With the Citrix micro app builder, IT can create a connection between business apps as well as custom and legacy systems and the Citrix Workspace to provide consistent UI.
Organizations are often stuck between adopting newer products or services and maintaining legacy systems and applications, which can require IT to deploy challenging forklift upgrades and users to interface with antiquated apps.
The latest version of Citrix Workspace, however, allows users to view and edit data or files stored on backend systems and applications without leaving the secure workspace interface. Citrix's acquisition of Sapho provided Citrix Workspace with the micro app technology that supports the interactions between outside application and the workspace.
The Citrix micro app builder has over 100 out-of-the-box micro app templates for common business applications and systems that can simplify setup for IT professionals. The micro app builder provides a framework for IT to build out micro apps for custom apps and legacy systems as well.
Out-of-the-box integrations for common apps
For the common system-of-record applications including Concur, Salesforce, Google Calendar and ServiceNow, IT can build upon Citrix's micro app builder templates for frequent tasks such as scheduling events, submitting and approving expense reports, viewing client data and accessing sensitive data.
IT pros can build actions and workflows for users to accomplish such tasks with the Citrix Workspace micro app templates, which provide an outline of notification triggers, 'if-then' conditions, user input fields and data or images to display.
Even if an application or system isn't natively able to speak with a JSON or REST API, IT professionals can work around this with an API wrapper.
IT can then customize the workflow with no-code design to fit its exact needs and interact with the proper backend systems and applications. Citrix Workspace allows admins to view and interact with a preview of the micro app with a user's view of the mobile and desktop UI, which simplifies the testing process for IT.
The micro app builder for custom and legacy apps
Citrix Microapps can interact with apps and databases that don't come with out-of-the-box support as well, but it requires a bit more work for IT. IT must build a JSON or REST API for the desired custom app or legacy/on-premises system before Citrix Workspace can interact with these programs via an HTTP integration.
Even if an application or system isn't natively able to speak with a JSON or REST API, IT professionals can work around this with an API wrapper.
Organizations that want to contain users within Citrix Workspace can use the HTTP integration for their unsupported apps and legacy systems. This step presents extra work up front for IT professionals, but organizations don't have to rebuild the legacy programs or migrate away from them.
To build out this HTTP integration, IT professionals must start with the authentication method -- if required -- and the shortest version of the base URL that incapsulates the relevant XML data that Citrix Workspace needs to access. Once these two fields are in place, IT pros can type in the name of the desired endpoint code category. IT can verify the code with the micro app builder "Test Service" button.
With these fields in place, the workspace admin can edit the data to display however he or she desires with the same no-code design as with the out-of-the-box templates that Citrix provides. However, it may be difficult for some organizations without the proper IT skillsets in-house to reach this point of the HTTP integration building process.
