Hi all,
I'm having to get myself reacquantied with offline files after swearing an oath to stay away from them when mixed with folder redirections back around the XP launch timeframe. Suffice to say that I've had no real dramas working with offline files in its own right, but I'm having problems with working with them via the group policy settings.
In essence, I need to redirect My Documents to a My Documents folder located within the UNC mapped as the home drive. This can simply be represented as:
- H:\ (\\domain.edu.au\dfsNamespace\%username%)
- H:\My Documents
As you probably already assumed from the UNC, it is a DFS namespace.
So far, I'm at the point where My Documents is correctly made always available offline - that being the second bullet point covered. However, what I can't seem to achieve is resolving the requirement for the first bullet point to be made permanently offline. I'm using the following two group policy settings:
- Computer Configuration/Policies/Administrative Templates/Network/Offline Files: Administratively assigned offline files = Enabled;
- Computer Configuration/Policies/Administrative Templates/Network/Offline Files: Subfolders always available offline = Enabled.
Now, I'm not too concerned about the second group policy setting at this point in time, because where things are falling down is with the first setting:
- The policy setting requires a UNC. Okay, no problem, except that the client does not appear to honour the %username% variable;
- Using H:\ as a reference doesn't work, dare I say it, for obvious reasons (as in, that seems to be the case by design).
So, has anyone else with experience in the Administratively assigned offline files got any advice for how to resolve this dilemma? Because as far as I can see, I'm at an impasse.
As a footnote, I'm using the Computer-based offline file settings, as from what I understand both the computer and user sections are merged for the implementation anyway, and these settings are to only apply to laptops, not desktops. The logic therefore applies to the asset, not the user (given they can roam between machines, including using on-loan laptops).
Cheers,
Lain