Can the plugin work in a shared virtual environment (Citrix)?

[jonathanwilsonucla]

Hi, I'm on the IT team at the UCLA Library, and we got a question about making this tool available for Mac users. We have a Citrix environment where anyone can run Excel for Windows, but it looks like the plugin requires admin rights to install and is profile-specific, so I'm not sure that's a feasible option.
Does anyone have experience or know of libraries providing this in a virtual environment?

[tventimi]

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for reaching out and for your interest! I do not know much about the Citrix environment, but it is possible that you could get the plugin working by manually installing the files. Below I will provide a few details that may help.

While the installer does write the files to the user profile by default, they could actually be placed anywhere (including a shared directory accessible by all users). However, each individual user would need to load the plugin to Excel manually. And as you noted, the app settings are user-specific and stored under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings\Excel Catalog Lookup" in the registry.

I have zipped up all the installation files and added them to the release. You can download them here:

https://github.com/pulibrary/ExcelAlmaLookup/releases/latest/download/CatalogLookup.zip

If you download this ZIP file and extract it to a shared location, then users can load it to Excel as follows:

1. In Excel, go to the "File" tab, and click "Options" in the left sidebar.
2. In the options window, click "Add-ins" in the left sidebar.
3. On the bottom of the window, next to "Manage", select "Excel Add-Ins", and click "Go...".
4. In the dialog that appears, click "Browse...". Navigate to the installation directory, and select the file "CatalogLookup.xlam". Then click "OK".
5. Click "OK" again in the Add-ins dialog, and close the options window. The "Library Tools" tab and "Look up in Catalog" button should appear.

It may also be necessary to add the installation directory to the Trust Center in Excel, depending on your security settings.

The set of steps above essentially adds the plugin file path as an OPEN value under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel\Options". I have not found a way to set this value for all users on a given machine, but it may be possible depending on what configuration tools you use.

Please let me know if this works for you or if you have any other questions. I hope to write up a more detailed manual installation guide in the future, so I am interested in your experience. (There are other reasons while the default installer script may not work for some users.) By the way, other Mac users have expressed interest in the tool as well, so we are currently investigating ways to run this in the Mac environment.

Thanks!

Tom Ventimiglia
Princeton University Library

[jonathanwilsonucla]

Thanks so much Tom! I haven't had a chance to share this info with many others yet, so it will likely be January before we do any meaningful testing.