Application integration into SharePoint using Citrix WISP

As part of my previous post on how to make search results actionable I mentioned using Citrix as a potential choice for interacting with search results. I would like to expand on that further. There is some information regarding the 2003 version of Citrix WISP, but nothing on the 2007 version at citrix.com that I could find. But, I assure you it is released and working.

WISP stands for Web Interface for SharePoint and it provides two main features:

• Application enumeration and publishing - Enumerates applications and displays the application icons inside the Web Part for users. Launches applications from the Web Part using pass-through authentication, providing single-click launching.
• Content Redirection - Access documents and content available through the portal using applications hosted on Presentation Server. The system intelligently determines which application needs to be launched on Presentation Server or on the client’s desktop to open the document or content requested by the end user.

What this means is you can turn your SharePoint portal into a virtual desktop for your employees. Because Citrix allows you to run remote desktop applications over the web, you can configure all your employees applications to be launched directly from the SharePoint portal. If you are good with XSLT you can even provide your users with a "START" menu system just like on the Vista desktop.

The aspect of WISP that I found most useful though is the ability to do content redirection from portal links. This means that when you choose to edit a document from a document library WISP will launch whichever remote application is configured for that file type, like MS Word or Excel. The way it works is that the remote application actually gets passed in the portals path to the document, this means that the remote app must be able to use that path to work with the document. If for some reason your Citrix application server doesn't have access to the portal itself and the subsequent doc library then it can't open the document.

Extending WISP beyond SharePoint Content: As stated above, WISP works with content that resides in the portal but what if you want to use WISP to launch an application that works off of database content, like WorkSite for instance. Since the file to open is actually a database record you have to get resourceful. You will need to trick WISP into calling a new Citrix launcher application that you create to proxy the launch information to your remote LOB application. I can tell you that it is doable and works great for my clients, and saves on investing in SharePoint integrations from every vendor that your client uses. Instead you can use the BDC to search and display summary information and use the actual client applications for the rest.