Citrix Smart Auditor, available to Platinum customers, allows you to record XenApp sessions. The recorded sessions are cataloged, archived and made available for playback using the Smart Auditor player. This capability has become increasingly beneficial to companies (banking, healthcare, and trading to name a few) wishing to monitor user activity for applications which access sensitive data.

The Smart Auditor Policy Console is used to create policies to trigger the records of XenApp sessions. Depending on your specific compliance or auditing requirements, policies can be used to record all XenApp sessions, or to record specific applications which access your sensitive data.

The diagram below, taken from the Smart Auditor User Guide, shows a typical Smart Auditor implementation:

There are 5 main components of Smart Auditor:

1. The Smart Auditor Agent
The agent is installed on the XenApp servers and is responsible for recording data. The SA agent can only point to one SA server.

2. The Smart Auditor Player
The player, typically installed on a Windows XP or Vista workstation, is used to playback recorded sessions

3. The Smart Auditor Server
The server hosts the Broker, an IIS application which handles:
a. recorded session search queries and file download requests from the SA Player
b. policy administration tasks from the SA Policy Console
c. evaluates the recording policies for each XenApp session

4. The Smart Auditor Database
A SQL database used for storing recorded session data

5. The Smart Auditor Policy Console
An MMC snap-in that is used to specify which XenApp sessions are recorded

The SA Server, Database, and Policy Console can reside on the same server, and is not limited to a single XenApp farm. Multiple farms can access a single Smart Auditor server but you should consider multiple SA servers if you wish to record all XenApp sessions as a way to “load balance” traffic.