Roaming Profiles/ Software Distribution/ Outlook

[Dell and Rodney]

Hello my questions are based on WS2003/ Outlook 03 and AD

1. How does one set up roaming profiles, so no matter what system the user logs onto all their documents are available?

2. When my user logs onto the domain ive noticed that it didnt have access to MS Office in particular Outlook therefore i setup the path in AD under software distribution which removed any errors..........now when this user logs onto another machine they have to set it all up again (i.e. type in their username/ password) meaning they loose emails from one pc to another - how coudl i copy the Outlook.pst file (assuming i copied it over from the server) and have their username and password setup as it was or is there a better way of doing this?

Cheers

[valter]

1. Create a folder on your server called Profiles and share it as Profiles$ ($ will hide share from share view). Opem Active Direcotry Users and Computers and on each users Profile tab in the section Profile type \\servername\Profiles$\%username% ("servername" replace with your actual name of the server). Once user logs on, the profile on the server will be created. Everything from C:\Documents and Settings\%Username% will be copied over to the server including Outlook profile and My Documents folder. Dig up GPO and find policy something like this "Add administrators to users profile ...." or something similar. Anyway this will allow you as admin to see inside user profile.

2. I personally I don't like to keep PST file inside the profile, because my users keep thousands of e-mails (even back from 1996) as well as My Documents folder. So I've made redirection of My Documents folder to D drive (each of mine computers has both C and D drives) using GPO, users have network attached drive (P:\) for their most important files (everyday backup), and PST file is placed inside My Documents folder (i.e. D:\My Documents\Exchange\username.pst) PST file MUST be moved manually, as far as I know. I was looking also for some way once user profile is created to automate moving of PST file as well as updating of the path to PST file in Outlook settings but no luck so far ... the other solution is once user logs on, and you connect him to e-mail server, you can manually place PST file under their home folder (Network Attached Drive, in my case P:\ so it's placed in P:\Exchange\username.pst) so no matter where do they logon, they have their e-mails with them. The problem comes with size of PST file (if your users keep buch or emails) due to backup ...

[Marsden]

I'm using Exchange 2003 with Outlook 2003 and I did not have to set up roaming profiles to access my email on any of my machines.

I may be on machine A and delete mail or view new mail that has come in recently. If I go to machine B the changes that I made on machine A are reflected on machine B. The same applies to machines C and D. Exchanges handles the PST and the machines A through D just keep a local cache which is refreshed every 10 minutes.

[valter]

I'm using Exchange 2003 with Outlook 2003 and I did not have to set up roaming profiles to access my email on any of my machines.

I may be on machine A and delete mail or view new mail that has come in recently. If I go to machine B the changes that I made on machine A are reflected on machine B. The same applies to machines C and D. Exchanges handles the PST and the machines A through D just keep a local cache which is refreshed every 10 minutes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

When using an Exchange server, mail is stored on the server. PST file is created ONLY if you're making archive, pther than that PST is not created at all. All mails are stored on the server. That's why you can access it through OWA as well ...

[Marsden]

I also have a archive.pst, archivebackup.pst, and the outlook.ost on each machine.