Multiple desktops for users on different machines

[Mike K]

Hi, I work in schools were the students use computers in different classrooms.

The problem is having desktops appropriate to were they are - ie in the English Classroom they need a desktop showing icons for English software, and in History they need History icons. Each computer will only have software on it relevent to each subject

How do I use Folder redirection to give them the appropriate desktop.

My understanding is that folder redirection applies only to Users and not Computers.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mike K

[scottzaiss]

I have the exact same situation at the school I work at. What I do is to keep all of the user accounts seperate from the computer, then on the OU's that the computers are in (one OU per classroom) I turn on loopback processing and set the User policy to redirect the folders. This way no matter what user logs into that computer, they get the appropriate menus.

To minimize the number of GPO's, I have a startup script that puts what I call the 'BaseOU' into an environment variable of the same name and use the %BaseOU% variable in the folder redirection. The script strips out all of the long ou=OUName,cn=blahblahblah junk and just leaves the short name of the OU that the computers are in.

ou=RoomNumber,cn=Classrooms,cn=Campus,dc=mydomain, dc=local becomes just RoomNumber.

[code:1]Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")

strComputerName = UCase(objSysInfo.ComputerName)

'Manually pull out the first OU= from the string
intStart = InStr(strComputerName, "OU=") + 3
intLength = Len(strComputerName)
strBaseOU = Mid(strComputerName,intStart,intLength-intStart)
intEnd = InStr(strBaseOU, ",") - 1
strBaseOU = Left(strBaseOU,intEnd)

Set objShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell" )
Set colSystemEnVars = objShell.Environment("SYSTEM")

colSystemEnVars("BaseOU") = strBaseOU
[/code]


Scott

[AdamV]

Surely on the computers in the history class you could simply have the relevant icons on the "All Users" desktop.

If each computer has to show icons for the software which is on it, the All Users desktop is the obvious logical place to put them. Or did I misunderstand something about the setup here?

You could use machine startup scripts to get these icons there in the first place and ensure they stay there, if needed. Use scripts attached to OUs for each class type.

[scottzaiss]

I can't speak for Mike, but at our school we have a lot of applications that run from the server and just need a shortcut in the start menu or desktop on the local machine. This way when we a new application or web shortcut needs to be put on all the computers in a classroom in the middle of a semester, we just have to copy a shortcut to one folder on a server that clients point there menus to and it's done. With over 400 applications, shortcut management can be a NIGHTMARE.

[Mike K]

Cheers scottzaiss - you are spot on! I tried it and it works a treat.

Sorry it's taken a while to get back and thank you - the school has been closed for a fortnight due to the Easter period, so I've not been able to test it.

Thanks again - Mike K