Mandatory profiles with additional mailboxes Outlook 2002

[wood55]

Hello,
We are looking into switching to mandatory profiles in an NT4 server environment using exchange 5.5 and xp clients running Outlook 2002 (xp)

I am going to try to have roaming outlook settings by using .PRF files but so far it seems that these can not be used to open additional mailboxes.

We have quite a few users who always need access to other mailboxes and they will not be happy with having to add the mailbox again each time they log in.

Do any of you have a work around for this problem?

Thanks, Andy

 

[Dollar]

Andy

I wasn't aware mandatory profiles affected outlook as well... Learn something new everyday. Try the following:

Make the user an admin
Log user off/on for changes to take effect
*if I remember correctly, they should have full "change" access to their profile
Make the change to the outlook mailbox
Remove the admin rights
Logg user off/on for changes to take effect

Hope this helps (unfortunately I don't remember too much about mandatory profiles)

Good luck

 

[wood55]

Hi,
Thanks for your suggestion. Sorry for taking so long to reply - I've been on holiday

Your way should work for most setups but won't for ours (sorry, that was my fault for not giving a complete list of won't we're aiming for)

Thanks again,

Andy.

P.S I've found a solution for our setup so if anyone needs to know my solution, just ask.

 

[tomsawyeruk]

Andy,

I'm trying to use Mandatory profiles with Windows 2000, and would like to hear how you overcame the issue of setting individual user settings for Outlook. Didn't do printer settings as well by any chance?

Regards
Shaun

 

[wood55]

Hello,
I'll need to check that Win 2000 has the same function as XP. Then I'll post the solution for you.

Check back in about an hour.....

 

[wood55]

Good morning,

We needed to find a way to have mandatory profiles that still allow some settings to roam.

XP has a built in command called “Reg” (reg.exe)You’ll need to double check that Windows 2k has the same function (It’ll probably be in the resource kit if it isn’t installed as standard)
It appears out of several thousand workstations we don't have any win2k workstations so I couldn't check this for you.

With “Reg” you can specify which registry keys you wish to export to a file. You can also use it to read registry keys back in from a file that you’ve created previously.

So, a solution to allow roaming mail settings and roaming printers (and anything else we care to add in the future) is to use a policy to run logon and logoff scripts.

The scripts will load the users unique settings at log on and record any changes at log off.

An example to allow roaming mail settings at logoff, the following line would appear inside a batch file:

reg export "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem" \\servername\%Username%\%Username%mail.reg

For auser this will create a file in the root directory of the users network drive called ausermail.reg

The next time they login, the machine will run the login script which contains the line

reg import \\servername\%Username%\%Username%mail.reg

This will load the settings that have previously been recorded at logoff. Obviously, you can expand on the scripts to allow for the first time they log on so it loads some default settings using the return code.

I.E (pseudo)
If return code = 1
Then load defaultmailsettings
End if

The line for exporting printers would be

reg export "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Printers" \\servername\%username%\%Username%printers.reg

The line for importing them would be

reg import \\servername\%username%\%Username%printers.reg

you can use it to export and later import any settings that would usually be stored in the ntuser.dat

I've only had this in a small test environment so far but it is working so well that we will be rolling it out when we go fully XP/mandatory. Hope hope it works as well for you.

Good luck
Andy Wood.