Forum Discussion
Active Directory Users
Tim Hunter - Did you setup Roaming Profiles? Or are you wanting to use "Mandatory Profiles" where they cannot change anything (or at least it will revert to the settings the next time they log in?
I'm not sure what you did, so I cannot ascertain if you have "missed a step" as you mention. Can you provide us with the steps that you did do then we can evaluate?
If you want to look through some of the steps, here is a guide for Roaming Profiles.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/jj649079(v=ws.11)
Hope this helps!
The AD was already built when I arrived. It doesnt look like any of the users are setup as Roaming Profiles. Is it easy to switch the users to a Roaming Profile? Is there any negatives to making users have Roaming Profiles?
Tim Hunter - Well, there are size considerations, etc. There are trade-offs, between local profiles and roaming profiles. There are Pros and Cons to each.
What is the end goal? Are you trying to just provide the same icons/shortcuts on the desktop for each user everywhere? Or are you trying to provide that user everything they have access to (i.e. documents, files, etc.) on every computer they log into?
Moving existing profiles that are local, to be roaming after the fact, can have some impact on the existing data. It can be done, but you have to do so with the user data in mind. What is your Office (specifically, Outlook) strategy? Do users leave all their email on the server (or O365) or do they create local .pst files?
How big are their profiles on their existing machines (when you go look at Properties, Advanced System Settings, User Profiles)? That data will have to be transferred across the wire to every workstation and then be synchronized at logon.
There are many ways to approach this, depending on what you're wanting to provide for the user experience. It might be that there are some settings you can utilize (GPOs, Folder Redirection, etc.) that may better for the user and your network bandwidth.
Edward
Edward, I appreciate all your feedback and information it is very helpful in my learning.
So basically, my users login to their local PC or laptop, then they have a Remote Desktop shortcut on their desktop to whichever server they are required to logon to. Also, they may have some favorites/bookmarks in their IE/Chrome browsers. I would like if the user logs on to a different PC in the office then their same RDP shortcut would be on the desktop no matter which network PC they logon to so they can easily remote into our server for working. Hope this makes sense. Am I over complicating it?
