Forum Discussion
Active Directory Users
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?
Tim Hunter - No Worries Tim! Glad to help.
If all you're after is a Desktop Shortcut and some Favorites, you can do a lot of that with GPO or some other methods.
What is the OS that your clients run? What Browser are you/they using?
I know you said your Domain Controller is 2016. Let me know the other items and we can find you some ways to do this outside of full "roaming profiles".
Edward
The users are running Windows 10. Some users are using Chome, other use IE and some use both.
The Remote Desktop shortcut is saved with the users specific logon details so they just have to click the icon, they don't have to logon each time. Not sure if there is a way to do this for all users.
Tim Hunter - Wow. That might be a hard thing. You might have to have the user provide their own username and password. Hmmmm.... I'll need to think on that.
To get the RDP file (generic) for every user on the box, you can create the RDP file (pointing to servername, and whatever settings short of username/password) and then Save it. After saving it, you can then copy it to the C:\Users\Public\Desktop location (you'll need to provide admin "okay") and then once it is copied there, it will show up on every users desktop. That's for Windows 10. On other Versions, I think it is called "All Users".
For the Favorites in IE, there is a GPO that will allow you to do that. Here is one that I found:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/asiatech/2014/12/16/how-to-apply-favorites-links-to-ie10ie11-in-gpo-without-iem/I highly recommend you download the GPO Reference and do searches in the spreadsheet. Don't get overwhelmed! Here it is:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=25250
For Chrome, I know that you can control a number of settings with GPOs, but you have to add an Administrative Template to do so. Our organization does restrict a number of settings in IE and Chrome via GPOs, I just don't have enough experience to know if you can push Favorites in that Admin Template or not. Sorry!
Here is one article that talks about Chrome settings via GPO:
http://woshub.com/how-to-configure-google-chrome-via-group-policies/Edward
So when I copy the shortcuts that I want to C:\Users\Public\Desktop do I need to do that on each PC/laptop individually?