CEO Wants to be in Workgroup at Home

[JoshuaBuche]

Our CEO wants to be able to join his home network when at his home, but obviously he's logging into the domain here.

He wants this to be as simple as possible and would like to use his domain account to log on, but when at home have access to all his network drives and printers.

I can't really think of a way besides having him map drives to each of the home resources, when he's at work obviously they wont work, but they'll be there when he does get home.

Bottom line, what is the usual fix for these types of situations? He doesn't want two accounts, which makes my job hard. I told him he can connect to each computer manually (start>run>\\COMPUTER NAME) but he said it gives him an error becuse he's part of a domain, which I find hard to believe, cause I've never seen that.

So any sugegstions are greatly appreciated, I know this isn't really a Server 2003 issue.

 

[adamroof]

well, as a domain computer you have the option to select where to login to from a dropdown box. Setup the local computer(Laptop1(this computer), ie) account to access the home resources, the domain account will remain the same.

Map a drive under the local account to an IP based share, hopefully something at home is static (\\192.168.1.5\share) which would then prompt for a password one time, and each time the computer is reconnected at home. At that point he should have rights to attach to the printers, create shortcuts for him to the network drives at home on his desktop.

I say IP based because although named might work, if his netBIOS doesnt work, or conflicts with something in the cache, it might fail again and again without a DNS server.
That should also "prevent" credential conflicts.

Ahh, the users, what fun.

 

[JoshuaBuche]

That's exactly what I told him, but like I said he wants to just have one sign on. I just wanted to post here to confirm basically what I already knew.

Thanks.

 

[adamroof]

Tell him to install biometric authentication on his home network and at the office

 

[JoshuaBuche]

There you go, I'm sure he has the money!!

 

[aquias]

Adam's solution is the best. Please, don't take this wrong way (I've had the pleasure of being seperate CEO's favorite Techie) but have you tried to explain this to him differently?

Keep the passwords the same on both accounts and walk him through what the "new" logon process would entail?

 

[JoshuaBuche]

Yes I have, that's what's so frustrating. They seem to want miracles, I basically explained I could set up his local logon, the exact same as his domain and all he would have to do is click the drop down and choose to logon to the computer, rather than the domain. Although he didn't say no, he still seemed unsatisfied. That's kind of why I wanted to post here, because to me that seems like the simplest way to do it.

Like I said earlier, he could do it from his domain logon as well, if he just did the Start>Run>\\Computer Name, but that's way too much work :~ Besides, he claims to get an error I've never even heard of.

Hopefully I'll get to explain it to him again, maybe he's misunderstanding me?

 

[wcburton]

What about putting a local login script on the laptop that checks to see if the home network is present. You could test by IP addr assignment (corp and home should both be DHCP but maybe different subnets used), or presence of a certain machine on the home net, or absence of a certain machine on the corp net. Then based on the test, execute the section that maps drives. Printers defs would be there always, just either ready or offline depending on which network connected.

 

[JoshuaBuche]

Yes, I had considered something like that, but he's real impateint. Something like that would take time, and assistance from him to tell me how it's working and what problems there are. And I'm not sure how well he'd cooperate, eventhough it'd be for him.

I have a hard time just getting access to his laptop when he has general issues with Office or whatever because he always leaves 5-6 email messages open and a half dozen Excel or Word documents open and I'm always too scared to save and close them, even though I constantly tell all of management to save and close everything and I'll look at it when they leave for lunch or something.

So my point is he'd have to take it home, report back to me what happened, what error messages he gets, etc, etc. But he's not that good at that, but the script is a good idea, I will keep it in mind.

 

[wcburton]

Have him invite you over for a lavish working dinner.

 

[JoshuaBuche]

There you go.

Seriously though, I was really considering telling him that I will come over, free of charge (he lives in my general area, +/- 15 miles or so), just to get it up and running. I know it would take like 1 hour tops. But I don't want to come off as a kiss a$$ so I decided not to.

As a side note, not to get off topic, but the way I've decribed him, is that normal? I'm kind of new to this, in sense of having to deal with people, in particular management. But I HATE when he'll come to me with a problem, and I'll lay out a few scenarios of what we can do but he'll either never get back to me. I get the feeling he thinks everything is only a mouse click away. It frustrates me because I love challanges, but if I don't get the okay from him, I'm not going to start messing with his system or whatever.