Citrix, Group Policy, and directory path redirection

[MMyers1]

I have a group of users who are using a published desktop via Citrix. This all works well, except they have a couple of macros in access 97 that require a path to the c:\temp directory. The issue is that as each user runs the macro, it has the potential to over-write another employee's file.

What I would like to do is redirect the c:\temp folder so that it actually resides in their roaming profile, not on the c:\ drive of the Citrix server.

We manage our published desktops via Group Policy and would like to do the folder redirect in the same manner, I just have not been able to figure out how!!

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

Mark Myers
Dallas, Texas

 

[edlcsre]

First question would be whether the access macros are hard coded to use c:\temp, or whether they are actually using the TEMP variable? if the latter, then it should be a case of simply setting the variable so that the temp directory is set to be in the user's roaming profile.

If not, then, especially if you're only talking about a few macros, its almost certainly going to be easier to change these manually to refer to %temp% and then to simply set that variable to the appropriate value elsewhere, can be done via GP as far as I am aware or, if not, a simple addition to the login script can have the same effect.

The key is whether the macros use c:\temp or a variable, because if its the hard coded path you can set the temp to be wherever you like, but the macro will always point to c:\temp !

Hope this helps a bit though. I have vague memories of trying to do a very similar task for a company who didn't have GP in place, and ended up making registry changes to set the variables. Much less elegant, but can still be done.

Thinking about it, one way to test this out would be to check where the macros write the files to (c:\temp) and to use the set command to see which variable is set to c:\temp
Then, using the set command again, change the variable which points to c:\temp to point to somewhere else, c:\test, for example. Then run the macros again. If it writes files to the test folder, you know its using a variable and not a hard coded path and you're laughing.

Hope this helps, let us know how you get on.

Chris

 

[MMyers1]

Unfortunately, these macros were not written by accomplished programmers, so they are all hardcoded to the path c:\temp.

 

[edlcsre]

Unfortunately, these macros were not written by accomplished programmers, so they are all hardcoded to the path c:\temp.

Afraid that means you are almost certainly going to have to get the macros changed if you want them to be 'terminal services compliant' Your only possible other option might be to consider using the SUBST command (possibly at user logon) to point c:\temp to somewhere else, but this is far from ideal.

Possible other alternatives would be to publish the word document which contains the macros as an application, and limit this to just one user at a time. This will effectively allow only one user per server, but, again, depending on how many people use these tools, its not ideal. Other issue is there is nothing to stop everyone using them from word in their published desktop too.

Sounds like its time to get the macros updated, unfortunately.

Chris