All right.
So let's go ahead and implement some folder redirection policy here.
So I've created a GPO called Folder Redirection Policy and I'm going to go ahead and edit it and drill
into policies, Windows Settings, folder redirection, and you'll notice that there are a bunch of
folders that can be redirected.
Now keep in mind that this is a server 2012 or two box that I'm editing on, or if it were a Windows
eight box, it'd be the same situation.
But all of these folders are not the same if you're, let's say, on an XP box.
There's a subset of folders that you can actually redirect.
But let's go ahead and redirect the documents folder.
And then here we can define, as I mentioned, basic or advanced redirection.
If we were to just look at advanced redirection, you can go in here and you can choose a security group,
let's say sales.
And I've got a sales users group I'll choose.
And you can have that user redirected to that group or members of that group redirected to a path,
let's say server and a share.
So let's say it's sales users.
And then essentially each user would be redirected to this path that it shows here underneath that share.
And if I had a different group, I could redirect to a different share all within the same GPO.
What I'm actually going to do here, though, for the purposes of this demo, is to just do a basic
redirection, which gives me a number of options.
I can redirect to the user's home directory to a folder under the root path that I specify for each
user.
Redirect to a particular location.
So for example, I've used this in the past when I've redirected a folder to a like a shared location
that everyone shares.
Like, maybe the favorites are shared by all users.
That's where this kind of area or this particular option comes in handy.
Everyone goes to the same location and it might end up being a read only shared that the user can actually
write to.
But they all share the same sets of files or shortcuts or whatever it happens to be.
And then, of course, you can redirect back to the local profile if you choose to do so.
So let's go ahead and choose this one to create a folder for each user under the root path.
So I'm going to type in the name of a DFS share that I created.
So R to test titled user backslash user data.
And you'll notice here that what it's going to do is it's going to automatically create a folder under
user data for the user's name and then a document subfolder because we're reconnecting documents.
And one thing I did want to mention, going to my Active Directory accounts.
Under the user account, you'll notice in folder redirection.
I had the option to redirect to the user's home directory.
But that's talking about is any home path that might be defined on the user account.
So if I had a home path defined here, that's where it would end up redirecting the user.
I'll also point out that this particular user has a path specified in this profile path option, and
that's to a different DFS path.
That actually is what enables rolling profiles for the user.
Well, I'm not talking specifically about rolling profiles in this since they do kind of dovetail into
the ability to roam user settings and data as folder redirection does.
This is relevant and this is how you define for a given user that they have a roaming profile by entering
a path where their profile gets copied up to.
Okay.
So getting back to my folder redirection policy.
I've got the path to find.
Now I wanted to find my settings.
Remember I mentioned Grant exclusive means that when they when the folder gets created, only that user
has access to it.
So we'll go ahead and leave that alone.
Make that the default.
I'm going to say if the user has any content data existing in the documents folder, I want to move
it up to the server share.
And if I had any down level clients that needed to process this policy, I would need to check this
box.
I'm not going to that.
But I could use that if I had still some XP in my environment.
And then on policy removal, I wanted to redirect the folder back to the local profile.
So now I've defined my policy.
It's asking if I'm sure I don't have any down level clients and I'll say sure.
And now let's go to my Windows client.
This is Joe Sales, who's currently logged into this Windows client machine.
And I'm going to just click on documents and you'll see that this user has a bunch of files in here.
And I'm just going to go back up one level and verify that the files are all local.
It's in the user's local profile.
In this case, my documents is undersea colon backslash users backslash j sales.
Now what I'm going to do as I did before with software installation policy, I'm going to do a quick
update on this guy.
So I'm going to say pop date slash target user because I only need to update the pre user configuration
settings.
And it's going to do the update.
And now.
And actually the one thing that I forgot to do before I can do the processing of the policy, I actually
have to link the GPO.
So let's go back to PMC and we are going to link this to the users o u under sales.
Now what I can do is go back to my one client and do that update again.
And now you'll notice that it's telling me that folder redirection requires a foreground refresh, so
it couldn't complete that.
So now what I want to do, I'm going to go ahead and log off.
And now I'm logging back into the Windows client machine and you'll see it's applying folder redirection
policy.
And once that completes, we'll go in and take a look at what's going on with the documents folder.
So if I bring up documents and I right click on it, right click on documents, you'll notice that now
it's pointing to that DFS share and it's available as a shared document up on on the server.
And if I go in under any of my documents, you'll notice that they're all there.
So they're all copied up to the server.
And you'll also notice that they've been made available offline.
That's the offline folders feature that I mentioned.
That automatically happens when folder redirection occurs.
And if I go back to my server and if I bring up the folder where my data is, where my user data resides,
and I click in under user data, you'll see that's created a folder for sales.
And under there are the documents and I don't have permission because I check that grant exclusive option.
So I don't have permission to that.
So essentially what I've done is to create that folder redirection policy and deliver it to my client.