This article describes very briefly, step-by-step and visually how to create a Group Policy in Windows 2012, which will enable Fast Connect on any machine located within a newly created and designated Organisation Unit within Active Directory. 

Users may be able to adapt the general ideas presented here to other versions of Windows Server.

It will also describe how this can verified on the affected/applied machines that Fast Connect needs to be enabled on.

Prerequisites

Windows 2012 Active Directory with domain joined machines.
Working knowledge of, utilizing the following utilities on the domain controller:

• Active Directory Users and Computers, 

• Group Policy Management 

• Group Policy management Editor 

Instructions

Contents

• Create an Organisational Unit(OU) that will represent the computers you would like fast connect to be setup on

• Moving computers into a designated Organisational unit

• Create a Group Policy that imports the icaclient.adm.

• Naming your new Group Policy

• Editing the group policy

• Adding the icaclient.adm template file to the group policy

• Browse and select icaclient.adm

• Locate the Citrix Components node

• Configuring the fast connect settings in the policy

• Link new GPO to designated OU

• Verification

• Manually apply policy to machine (for testing testing)

• Verify that the machine has the poicy applied from the Group Policy management utility, remotely

Create an Organisational Unit (OU) that will represent the computers you would like fast connect to be setup on.

Moving computers into a designated Organisational unit

Here we have moved a computer called THIRTYTWO into a new OU called EnableFastConnectOU. This is achieved by launching the Active Directory Users and Computers utility on the domain controller.

Create a Group Policy that imports the icaclient.adm

1. Launch the Group Policy Management utility.

2. Create a new Group Policy.

This will then be linked to the the OU created earlier, which has the computers that this policy will apply to.

Naming your new Group Policy

Select a suitable name for your GPO.

Editing the group policy

Edit the GPO to contain fast connect settings.

Adding the icaclient.adm template file to the group policy

This is achieved by expanding the nodes, Computer Configuration node > Policies > Administrative templates. 
Right clicking this folder allows one to Add/Remove Templates… as shown in the following screen shot.

Browse and select icaclient.adm

You will be presented with the ability to add an .adm file. Add it by clicking the add and navigating to the icaclient.adm file which is usually located at c:\program files\citrix\ica client\configuration\icaclient.adm:

Locate the Citrix Components node:

Once you add the icaclient.adm file, you will notice an additional node called Classic Administrative Templates (ADM). This contains the Citrix ica client settings that can be set within this policy. This includes the fast connect functionality. 

This is the same structure of settings described in configuring fast connect on the local machine as indicated in the documentation provided with fast connect entitled Configuring the environment:

Configuring the fast connect settings in the policy

This completes going through and enabling all the fast connect suggested policies.

Close the Group Policy Management Editor when you are done configuring. It will save your changes within this GPO. You will be redirected to the Group Policy Management utility:

You can see the newly configured Group Policy, Enable Fast Connect appears under the Group Policies Objects node. 

Link new GPO to designated OU

At this stage we need to “link” this policy to the OU we originally designated to house the computers that these settings(fast connect) will be applied to. This is achieved by selecting the OU name .eg EnableFastConnectOU in this interface and right clicking it and selecting Link an Existing GPO… option in the resulting context menu:

Select the GPO to apply to the computers within this OU (Enable Fast Connect):

Ensure that the GPO, now linked to the appropriate OU has the correct Security Filtering. In this example, we have used “Everyone” to make this policy accessible to anyone. 

This is done by selecting the newly linked GPO under the OU we just added it to and selecting the Scope tab:

At this point, all machines within the OU EnableFastConnectOU will have the settings configured in the Enable Fast Connect GPO applied in the next 90 minutes.

Verification

Manually apply policy to machine (for testing testing)

Machines within this OU can be forced to manually apply through performing a gpupdate/force from any of the client machines located in that OU explicitly. 

This allows one to negate the need to wait 90 minutes.

You can verify that the settings have been applied on the client by locating the policy configurations applied in the registry:

Verify that the machine has the policy applied from the Group Policy management utility, remotely:

To do this, you will need to create a new Group Policy Result report. This will allow selection of which machines you would like to query. Running the query will produce a report showing which GPOs were applied. 

Note: If the WMI service is disabled or restricted on the client machine, these reports will not work.