Do you know who Warren Simondson is? Check out his free TS and Citrix utilities. Then thank him.

A little over a year ago I received a random email from some dude named "Warren Simondson" from an Australian company called "Ctrl-Alt-Del IT Consultancy." In that email, Warren sent a link to a little freeware utility that simplified the process of managing multiple instances of a single published application with different "per department" settings. Since that email in 2006, I've received about a dozen more emails from Warren, all announcing and explaining some free Terminal Server or Citrix Presentation Server freeware utility that he'd recently written.

I've mentioned Warren's name and site quite a bit in my travels throughout the world, but it seems that not too many people have heard of him or know about his utilities. That ends today! Warren is quite possibly one of the most important people in our industry that you've never heard of.

Here's a quick overview of the free Citrix and Terminal Server utilities from Warren Simondon and Ctrl-Alt-Del IT Consultancy:

TSBACKDROP

A tool that automatically displays important information about a Terminal Server session on the user's desktop background. (Like SysInternals' BGInfo, except customized for TS and Citrix sessions.) Custom information includes stuff like the client computer name, client IP, username, etc. This is useful for helpdesk calls so the user can quickly identify information about their session.

DEFSET

A GUI tool for managing the default printer selections on a per-user basis. This app can be published and/or run as part of a login script to let the users manage their own default printers.

TSMSG

A better version of Microsoft's msg.exe, TSMSG gives you the ability to send a popup message to all users on a particular server via a command-line switch. (i.e. /server:citrix01). You can also send messages to all users on multiple servers via wildcards in the name (i.e. /server:citrix*).

TSPASSCHG

A standalone GUI tool that lets users change their password. This works as a published application, so users can simply click the "Change my password" icon in Web Interface and change their password without needing something like Citrix Password Manager.

TSWHEREIS

A command-line tool that will display whether a specified user has any sessions on any Terminal Server in your domain. An "/EXPORT" switch writes the data out to a CSV file.

BOMMProf

A GUI tool for deleting or copying multiple profiles stored on a server.

ENVTSCIP

A command-line tool that writes the user's client device's IP address into a user environment variable. (Another free tool call ReconnAct! from Denamik does the same thing.)

GETTSCIP

Similar to ENVTSCIP, except this tool returns the client's IP address to the command line. This is useful for scripts.

GETPUBAPP

A command-line tool for Citrix Presentation Servers that displays the name of the session's published application in the command line. Again, this is useful for scripts.

QRYPUBAPP

A command-line too for Citrix Presentation Servers that checks whether the current session is running a published application. This is really cool when used with login scripts. (i.e. One huge script can branch in different directions depending on which published application the user is starting.)

ICSWEEP

A command-line tool that, in one single command, will clear ALL temporary Internet files, all temp files, and all user profiles not currently in use.

REMProf

A better version of Microsoft's delprof.exe, REMProf will delete local user profiles not in use, but can also filter what it deletes based on age, username, or SID.

TSLOGOFF

A better version of Microsoft's logoff.eve, TSLOGOFF adds filtering features via command line switches like ALL, /DISC, /SERVER, etc.

TSREBOOT

A command-line tool that lets you reboot some (or all) of your servers at specified intervals. An "/ALL" command-line switch lets you reboot all of your TS servers at once (or over an interval), and an "/EXCLUDE" switch lets you skip some of them.

Thanks Warren for all your hard work. Hopefully we'll all get to meet you in Chicago in June at BriForum 2008!