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Capturing the Citrix ICA File

HTTP (Non-Secure)​

You can save a copy of the ICA file by following the steps below:

  1. Launch Control Panel.

  2. Click Default Programs and Associate a file type or protocol with a program.

  3. Scroll down the list until you reach the .ica or ICA extension (Description field is labeled with Citrix ICA Client).

  4. Highlight the row in the list and click the Change/Change Program button. The association needs to be changed temporarily to Windows Explorer (explorer.exe) for this to work. To do this click the Browse button and navigate to explorer.exe and click Open.

  5. The next time you start the application through the web interface, Windows Explorer will be launched when the browser caches the HTTP response containing the ICA file.

At this point you should now be able to save a copy of the ICA (recommended location: <workspace>\projects\<project>\data).

HTTPS (Secure)​

If the connection is made over SSL (Secure Socket Layer), additional steps are required.

When using SSL the Citrix ActiveX control is used to launch the application, the ICA file is not written to disk so the file cannot be saved. However it is possible to reconfigure some of the Internet Explorer (IE) settings which will change the behavior so that the browser is forced to download the ICA file and write it away to disk.

To do this, configure IE so that it does not trust the Citrix ActiveX control and therefore reverts to the HTTP (non-secure) option where the ICA file is downloaded.

The steps for doing this are:

  1. Select Internet Options from IE's Tools menu.

  2. Select the Security tab.

  3. Click the Custom level button to display the Security Settings dialog.

  4. Ensure that File Download is set to Enabled in the Downloads section.

  5. If the site is currently in the Trusted sites or Local intranet zone, remove it (the site should be displayed as being in the Internet zone).

  6. If you are using a version of Windows Server that has the Enhanced Internet Explorer Security Configuration enabled, this feature must be disabled (Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Add/Remove Windows Components).

  7. Select the Advanced tab and scroll down to the Security section and make sure the box Do not save encrypted pages to disk is unchecked.

The next time you start the application through the web interface using IE, you should be able to save a copy of the ICA file.

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