We are looking for a way to have group policies apply to our remote sales force. We have approx 150 people who have laptops that are NOT joined to our domain but who do have to login as domain users when they connect to the VPN. For instance we want to create a GPO which will set the default saving type in Office 2007 to be compatible with Office 2003. We would like this to be applied to users who connect via VPN to our network.

Important Points:

Their computers are not part of our domain (or another domain for that matter, WORKGROUP all the way.)

The users all have a domain user created for them that they use to login to our VPN

We want to apply GPOs to these users.

The VPN connection is established once windows if fully booted up and operating (usually by visiting a website).

Anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Edited December 23, 200817 yr by dfnkt

Any particular reason why the PC's are not part of the domain?

You can try applying a GPO to the domain user accounts, but I don't think that would apply it to the PC if it's not on the domain.

It was just orginally setup for them to not be domain users because of what little access they need from us. We are having other issues related to them being in their own little world, so we may have to break down and fold them into the mix and absorb the cost associated.

is there a way that you can have an application pop up at the logon screen in which they can first vpn and then log onto their laptop? I know you said via website but maybe your vpn solution might have a standalone application that you might want to play with.

we use cisco at our office and the application has that option, we dont use it, but it exists.

found this:

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums...05456631/inc/-1

if you're not using logon scripts and just group policies you might be able to change the update interval of maybe send them a batch file that they can run on their laptops that contains gpupdate /force command

Edited December 31, 200817 yr by ceez