So let's dig into folder redirection a little bit more.
So some of the features in folder redirection and I think the first thing to know is that it is a per
user policy only, so it's only assignable under user configuration.
And in this path, policies, window settings, backslash folder redirection, you know, it really
does two main things.
Folder redirection redirects those folders out of the user profile path and into a server share.
So it essentially says, for example, with my documents that whenever you open my documents, whether
it's from Word or through the Explorer, it's going to really be pointing to that server share.
So whatever server share you assign to the documents path, that's where my documents ends up pointing
at.
So when you save files, they're being saved to the server rather than in the local profile.
The other thing that folder redirection does for you is it creates and then moves any existing data
that the user has in the local profile, in the local folder path, in the user's profile to the server
share.
And it does that when the user first logs in after folder redirection policy has been assigned to them.
So essentially at first log on, if the user has ten, 20, 100 meg of data, a gig of data folder redirection
policy is going to take and move that up to the server share where you've designated for that particular
folder redirection.
And that does mean that that first log on could take a while if the user has a lot of data.
Now the other thing that folder redirection provides is two modes of redirection.
There's a basic mode which essentially says that anyone that processes the policy gets redirected to
the same relative path, relative server location.
I'll show you this in a bit.
That doesn't mean that everyone's data gets sent to the same folder.
It just means that every user is being directed to the same server share.
Advanced folder redirection lets you designate different paths, different USC paths or different folders
based on security group membership.
So the scenario here might be that you have a file server for the sales users and a file server for
the users.
And you obviously don't want sales users being able to access any shares on the server because of the
sensitive nature of the data.
So you can designate two different redirections for, let's say, the documents folder within the same
folder redirection policy.
And that's really all it is, is that ability to designate different redirection locations based on
folder path or I'm sorry, based on group membership.
So this screenshot shows how you can set up folder redirection and you'll see that it's selecting the
basic or advanced redirection and then you can define where the redirected folders go.
So there's a number of options here, which I'll show you in just a bit.
But in this case, it's creating a folder for each user under the root path that's designated below.
In this case, it's a DFS share for user data that's called R to test dated backslash user backslash
user data.
Now I tend to like DFS as the place to redirect documents, just like I liked it in software installation
policy because it abstracts the physical server location.
So if you ever have to retire a server, a server runs out of disk space.
For whatever reason that server goes away.
You don't have to come in and change all of these policies.
And for that reason, and for the same reason that I liked it in software installation policy, I typically
use DFC shares or folder redirection.
And again, you don't have to necessarily replicate data.
You know, part of the value of DFS is that it has this ability of replicating data to multiple replicas.
You don't necessarily have to do that if you choose, for example, with user data not to replicate,
that's completely fine.
It can exist on a single server still, but it's referenced based on this kind of domain based relative
path.
Now the settings dialog on folder redirection gives you control over some of the other more kind of
granular options when you're redirecting this particular folder.
So for example, you can tell Windows to reposition the folder that gets created for the users, such
that only the user can access it.
Grant exclusive rights to that folder.
And in this case, the administrator would actually have to take ownership of that content in order
to see it.
So this is sort of the default mode, and it actually sets the permissions on the folder that gets created
that basically only grants the user who's accessing that folder access to those files.
The move, the contents of documents to the new location.
This is essentially that automatic copy that I talked about.
You don't have to do this.
You could manually copy the content for the user, but this is the default behavior for folder redirection
is to copy the data from the local profile to the server.
Share it first.
Log on this down level policy checkbox.
If you still have any of these versions of Operating System Windows 2000 XP Server 23 checking this
ensures that the documents or the folders that you're redirecting will also apply to these down level
clients.
Because Microsoft made a change in Windows Vista, an above to folder redirection, and then the final
policy removal controls.
What happens when the GPO that's delivering this folder redirection policy no longer applies?
And in this case, what's happening is that the folder is being redirected or copied back to the local
profiles so that essentially the location for the documents folder goes back to the local profile.
Now some best practices you really need to be selective about.
You redirect.
There's a lot of options in folder redirection.
You don't necessarily want to do all of them.
Things like app data and the desktop.
These can have a really negative impact on user performance if you're redirecting these to the server
share.
The reason for that is because a lot of the applications in the case of app data use that location,
that folder location to store settings or transient temporary data.
And if it's going up to the server share every time it's needing to perform those operations, then
the applications tend to slow down.
And with the desktop, it's sort of an interesting phenomenon that the desktop, when it's redirected
to a server share, can behave in.
I guess I would say strange ways in as much as there are often slow performance on the desktop or the
desktop doesn't respond as you might expect.
In any case, I tend to avoid redirecting the desktop folder and the app data folder because of these
kind of user performance issues.
Now if you do use that grant exclusive, remember what I said that even administrators will not be able
to see the content of those files.
So you'll have to actually gra take ownership of any shares or any folders if you want to get access
to that user content.
So that's kind of the default behavior.
So make sure that when users are aware that those redirected folders also use the offline caching feature,
offline files feature automatically.
So if the user is getting their documents folder redirected, it's also available offline.
And this can help when they run into issues where, let's say, for example, they're on a laptop.
And they might have been working on cached versions of the files.
And then when they connect back up to the corporate network and have access to the server, those files
are synched up to the server shares.
I've seen issues where this can cause issues, especially if they're working on different machines.
Maybe they're on their laptop, they're making changes to a document, they're going to a desktop.
They need to make sure that those changes that they've made while they were offline sync backup before
they go to the other machine and start working on those same documents.