California Department of Parks and Recreation uses Citrix for almost all
our TMS users, who work from a variety of locations throughout the
state, both on and off our WAN.  They can access TMS from any virtually
any computer with internet connection (preferably broadband or WAN),
Internet Explorer, and the Citrix ICA client (a simple download).  The
user is authenticated to the network and TMS using their standard
network login, and connects to one of several Citrix servers on which
the application is running (data and images reside elsewhere).

As I understand it, the user's computer serves as a terminal, with
Citrix sending optimized screen shots to the user and returning their
key strokes back to the application.   The performance (text and still
images) is excellent for users on the WAN and with broadband connections
(cable or DSL).   Dial-up connections are quite usable for text-only
screens, but become painful when images are involved.  Older versions of
Citrix supported only 256 colors (ugly!), but current versions offer 16
and 24 bit color options, making the quality of still images
indistinguishable from those viewed via a local client. Accessing audio
and video media attached to records is beyond our current Citrix
capabilities, however, at least at current bandwidths.

In addition to the flexible access and good performance, another upside
of the Citrix approach is to simplify installation of new releases - it
only needs to be done on the Citrix server(s), not on each of the
individual users computers.  A potential downside of the Citrix approach
is the additional institutional committment required to install and
support the Citrix server farm (we use Citrix for a number of other
enterprise-wide applications as well). We've been fortunate so far to
have good Citrix support, but it does require specialists.  I'm sure
there are other technical issues (firewalls, network security, etc.
etc.) that make this more complex than I'm aware (I'm not an IT
specialist), but from a user's perspective, it has worked very nicely
for us so far.

(I sound like a Citrix salesman - I'm not!)


>>> [log in to unmask] 8/25/2004 2:05:45 PM >>>
Are there any institutions out there that allow their staff to access
TMS from their home?  Our museum may be offering telecommuting as an
option for our employees, and I was curious how other institutions
addressed this issue.

Rob Morgan
TMS Database Administrator
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive
Baltimore, MD  21211
[log in to unmask]
410-396-6489 (phone)
410-396-6562 (fax)

Larry Felton, Cultural Resource Division
(916) 375-5917  (M/W/F)
(916) 653-9612 (T/Th)