Misja Geuskens

Since early February multiple posts on Citrix and Microsoft forums report freezes in MS Teams when managing contacts. I myself ran into this issue as well and logged a call with Microsoft, assuming it was an issue with MS Teams.

I did notice the issue in a customers environment (Windows 2016, CVAD 2012, MS Team 1.3.0.34662 / machine-wide installer). The freeze was reproducible:

• A freeze occured when adding an ‘off-line’ contact (in my case)
• It happened when logged with an account with of without admin permissions
• It happened both in Citrix Session and Console session on same Citrix VDA
• It did happen without FSLogix profile management
• It didn’t happen on Windows 2016 Server without Citrix

Multiple posts (Citrix Forum, Answers Microsoft, Answers Microsoft 2) reported different configurations in OS version and MS Teams Version, but all had Citrix and FSLogix in common. The way the freeze was experienced was slightly different, but it all came down to manipulating contacts within MS Teams.

I logged a call with Citrix and was advised to uninstall Citrix VDA Agent (VDA Cleanup Utility) and try to reproduce the issue.

I uninstalled Citrix VDA Agent 2012 (which was an upgrade from 1811) and tests showed:

• Console session with admin account => adding accounts to Teams; no freeze (in forum posts is was suggested that RDS didn’t reproduce the issue either)
• Installed Citrix VDA Agent 2012
• Console session with admin account => adding accounts to Teams; no freeze
• Citrix session with Test account and FSLogix => adding accounts to Teams; freeze
• Citrix session with same Test account and ‘no’ FSLogix => adding accounts to Teams; no freeze
• Citrix session with same Test account and fresh profile => adding accounts to Teams: no freeze

As you can imagine, at this moment it seems to be working, but it’s not consistently proven where exactly the problem originated. There are a number of variables which, in different order might result in different outcomes. But the main variables seem to be Citrix VDA Agent and a fresh FSLogix profile in order to solve the issue.

Not much of drilling down to the actual problem, but that is a typical IT scenario we often see,