You must perform the steps I describe for each folder that you want to redirect. To configure folder redirection, right-click the folder and choose Properties. On the properties page for the selected folder, you'll see the Target and Settings tabs, which Figure 1 shows. From the Setting drop-down list on the Target tab, choose Advanced - Specify locations for various user groups. Next, click Add to configure redirection settings for a particular Security Group. On the Specify Group and Location screen, browse to and select the Security Group to which these settings will apply. In the Target Folder Location field, enter the path to the server share to which you want to redirect the folders.
The Advanced settings let you specify different locations for redirected folders according to Security Group membership. Let's use Security Groups called Main Office Users, Branch A Users, and Branch B Users to help localize network traffic between client systems and servers. I recommend that you let the system create the target folder. To simplify this process, use the username variable and supply a name for the final destination folder. For example, if you're redirecting My Documents to a share named UFolders, specify the path \\ServerX\UFolders\%user-name%\MyDocs for the target folder. You can rename the MyDocs portion of the path to whatever suits you, but note that you must create a different folder for each folder you redirect. So, the My Document folders would redirect to the MyDocs subfolder, Application Data would redirect to the AppData subfolder, and so on. Figure 1 shows some typical entries for redirecting the My Documents folder. From this example, you can determine that the My Documents for a user named JSmith, a member of the Main Office Users Security Group, would redirect to \\Server-E1\RFolders\JSmith\MyDocs.
Users with large amounts of data will experience a delay the first time they log on while the system transfers their files to the redirected location. During this process, an Applying your personal settings message will display.
Offline Files
Thus far, you haven't had to take any special steps to accommodate the differences between working with XP and Win2K client systems. However, the two OSs handle configuring offline files in conjunction with redirected folders differently. XP Professional Edition automatically makes redirected folders available offline at the time they're redirected. With Win2K Professional clients, however, you must configure the offline file settings either manually or through Group Policy. You can use the Win2K client's Offline Files Wizard to configure the parameters, or you can use the Group Policy setting Administratively assigned offline files, which is in User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\Offline Files, to configure the change to apply to many clients. Whether you use the Offline Files Wizard or Group Policy, the paths you specify for the offline folders must match those you specified when you redirected the folders. Setting a system variable for the destination server can be useful when applying this policy to a group of users or computers that store their redirected folders on different servers. Figure 2 shows how you can use Group Policy to administratively assign offline folders—in this case by using the Udataserv variable in place of a server name. You probably won't want to change XP's default behavior, but should the need arise, you can use the Do not automatically make redirected folders available offline Group Policy setting under Administrative Templates\Network\Offline Files.
Roaming User Profiles
If you've experienced the nightmare of using roaming profiles under Windows NT 4.0, you might be cursing my name for even broaching the subject. Although Microsoft has improved the basic functionality of roaming user profiles, the most dramatic usability gains result from using folder redirection to get user data out of the profile. Roaming profile synchronization methods can adequately handle the relatively small amount of remaining data that makes up the profile.
To use roaming profiles in your environment, you must create a share on a server that will hold user profile data and grant all users full control of the share. Next, in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, open the properties for the users for which you want to configure roaming profiles. Click the Profile tab and, in the Profile path field, enter the path in which you want to store the user profile by using the syntax \\server\share\%username%, as Figure 3 shows. The next time the user logs on, the system will create a folder with the user's name in the specified share. The system will copy profile data for the user to the new folder, then synchronize the data between the folder and the client system the next time the user logs off.
Group Policy isn't required to make roaming profiles work, but Group Policy settings let you better manage profile size and behavior. You can find the Group Policy settings that relate to roaming user profiles in the following locations:
- User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon/Logoff
- Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon
Under User Configuration, you can find settings for limiting the size of roaming user profiles and excluding directories within the profile from the roaming portion. By default, when you enable the Exclude directories in roaming profile policy, the system populates the list of directories to exclude Local Settings, Temporary Internet Files, History, and Temp.
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