What is Call Home and AOT?

Call Home is a Citrix program that provides health checks by collecting and analyzing diagnostic data, and proactively notifying admins about issues. In Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, it runs as a background service under the name Citrix Telemetry Service.

Call Home collects Always on Tracing (AOT) logs and other relevant information to help diagnose problems. AOT is a subset of CDF traces that can be helpful when troubleshooting common failures (for example, VDA registrations and application/desktop launches). AOT logs are captured in memory when the Telemetry Service is installed and running.

Note: AOT logs are only meaningful after they are decoded. The decoding occurs automatically when diagnostic data is sent to Citrix.

Why AOT?

AOT was created to help identify connection failures and reduce the need to reproduce a problem. As the name implies, it is “always on,” so traces are constantly being captured. When issues occur, they are automatically captured.

How will it impact my environment?

AOT has minimal impact on deployments. The trace information is compressed as it is collected. The Citrix Telemetry Service retains a maximum of 10 MB of compressed recent trace information, with a maximum time limit of eight days.

Instructions

How do I collect diagnostic data (and AOT logs)?

There are three ways diagnostic data can be collected:

• Scout v3 tool     
• Call Home PowerShell commands
• Call Home schedules

Scout v3 tool

Visit Scout v3 How Do I to learn how to collect diagnostics, traces, and configure schedules. All Scout flows were designed to capture the AOT logs and easily send them to Citrix for further analysis.

Call Home PowerShell commands

Visit the Citrix Call Home documentation to learn how to use PowerShell commands to capture and send diagnostic data and AOT logs to Citrix.

Call Home schedules

When you install certain components and features in Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, you are offered the opportunity to participate in Citrix Call Home. When you enroll, by default, diagnostics are collected and uploaded to Citrix every Sunday at approximately 3:00 AM, local time. The upload is randomized within a two hour interval from the specified time. This means an upload using the default schedule occurs between 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM.

The Call Home schedules are available in Citrix Scout. For details on how to adjust the schedules, see Scout v3 How Do I.

How do I view scheduled Call Home diagnostic data?

To minimize the number of uploads listed on Citrix Insight Services, scheduled Call Home uploads are hidden by default. To view scheduled uploads, simply click the “Filter” button and select “Show XA/XD Call Home Scheduled uploads”

Where do I view AOT logs?

When diagnostic data is sent to Citrix, the AOT logs are decoded. The logs are then displayed in the CIS UI under Logs and Traces: