Citrix: Configuring the Logoff Behavior of a Desktop Group in XenDesktop 5

1 min read

Kees Baggerman·Senior Technical Director at Nutanix – Former Citrix CTP – NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor – 15+ years in EUC

All posts →

While building a PoC with Citrix PVS and XenDesktop 5 I noticed that my VM’s didn’t reboot after I logged off, so I found CTX127842 to change the Logoff behavior of a Desktop group in XenDesktop 5:

In XenDesktop 4, administrators configure the logoff behavior setting for a Desktop Group in the Delivery Services Console. This controls whether the desktop restarts when the user logs off (the default for pooled desktops) or does nothing as seen in the screen shot below. In XenDesktop 5, this setting is not available in the console and must be configured using the PowerShell SDK interface.

Procedure

Note: The PowerShell statements shown below are capitalized for readability purposes only. PowerShell is mostly case insensitive.

• Start a PowerShell session on the XenDesktop 5 Controller by clicking the blue PowerShell icon on the taskbar or navigating to PowerShell through the Start Menu.

• Run the following command to load the Citrix modules.
  Add-PSSnapin Citrix.*

• Run the following command to list all of the Desktop Groups in the environment and their respective properties. The property you are concerned with is ShutdownDesktopsAfterUse.
  Get-BrokerDesktopGroup

• Run the following command to disable the restart of the desktop or use $true to enable it: 
  Set-BrokerDesktopGroup -Name “Desktop Group Name” -ShutdownDesktopsAfterUse $False.

After changing the ShutdownDesktopsAfterUse to true using the command:

Set-BrokerDesktopGroup -Name “Desktop Group Name” -ShutdownDesktopsAfterUse $True

My desktops rebooted when logging of and my older configuration was restored.

The following two tabs change content below.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Kees Baggerman

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

Latest posts by Kees Baggerman (see all)

• Your Cloud Desktop Is Running on Yesterday’s Silicon - May 21, 2026
• When the Orchard Ships Production Software: AI-Augmented Development in the Real World - May 17, 2026
• Nutanix Documentation Script v5.0: Visual Reports, Brand Templates, and Seven Embedded Diagrams - May 15, 2026
• Nutanix AHV and Citrix MCS: Adding a persistent disk via Powershell – v2 - November 19, 2019
• Recovering a Protection Domain snapshot to a VM - September 13, 2019

Kees Baggerman

Senior Technical Director at Nutanix - Former Citrix CTP - NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor - 15+ years in EUC

Kees Baggerman is Senior Technical Director — Performance & Solutions Engineering R&D at Nutanix, where he leads a global team responsible for defining how enterprise applications are delivered on the Nutanix platform. A former Citrix Technology Professional and NVIDIA Enterprise Platform Advisor, he has spent 15+ years driving EUC strategy and technical direction across architecture, product, and customer success. He has been writing here since 2011 — sharing what he learns at the intersection of platform engineering and enterprise IT.

X / Twitter LinkedIn GitHub Email