Interactive Session of Logon Duration

Interactive Session is one of the metrics of Logon Duration monitored by Citrix Director. There have been questions regarding what constitutes this metric and why this is the lengthiest process in total logon duration. This article provides insight on how the Interactive Session is calculated.

As mentioned, Interactive Session is just one of the Logon Duration steps that contributes to the overall logon time. It is the time taken to handoff keyboard and mouse control to the user after the profile of the user is loaded for a session.It has three sub-phases: Pre-userinit, Userinit and Shell. With Citrix Director v1808, hovering over Interactive Session displays a tooltip showing the sub-phases, the time taken for each sub phase, the total cumulative time delay between these sub-phases, and a link to the documentation. The time duration of each individual sub-phase is displayed once Audit Process Tracking is enabled in Windows Security Logs. By default, the security logs are disabled hence the time taken for Pre-userinit and collated time duration of Userinit+Shell sub-phases are displayed.

Steps to enable Audit Process Tracking through Group Policy Object (GPO) :-

1.Create a new GPO and edit it using the GPO editor.

2.Go to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Audit Policy.

3.On the right pane, double-click Audit process tracking.

4.Select Success and click Ok.

5.Apply this GPO to the required VDAs or Group.
 

Interactive session time is calculated using the following formula:
Interactive Session Duration = Desktop Ready Event Timestamp (EventId 1000 on VDA) – User Profile Loaded Event Timestamp (EventId 2 on VDA)

Now let’s look at each of the components of this formula.
The Desktop Ready Event logged by Citrix Profile Management indicates the session is ready to be used by the user:

 

User Profile Load Complete Event by User Profile Service which indicates User Profile has been loaded to the VDA:

The Desktop Ready Event is the event logged when BrokerAgent (VDA) finishes below tasks after the user profile load is complete.

1. ICAService receives WTS_SESSION_LOGON event from Windows, where Windows confirms that session logon is ready.
2. Evaluate Resultant Set of Policies for user
3. Notify USB and Printer subsystems
4. Wait until VDA (specifically the Explorer process) reaches the input-idle state, which implies that it is ready to interact with the user.

Once these steps are complete, Citrix Profile Management logs the Desktop Ready Event. Once this event is logged, it is used to calculate Interactive Session by calculating the difference between time stamp of Desktop Ready Event and the Profile Load Complete Event.

Note: Start-up apps run after a delay in Windows 8 and later versions and due to this interactive session time duration will be more . 

Diagnosing User Login Issues
Interactive Session of Logon Duration in Citrix Director – Explained