Outlook Roaming Profile/PST

[djtech2k]

I have a topic posted in the server 2003 forum that may be better suited here. I will post a brief description of it and post a link to that post and its replies.

Here is the thread:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1171726&page=1

Here is my original post:

Hello Everyone.

I have a GPO question that I would like to bounce off of some of you. This is an issue that I need to resolve for outlook client settings. I have loaded the office GPO adm's so i have anything available as far as I know.

I have a remote site with a couple thousand users that currently uses roving outlook profiles with a product called redfox. We need to get away from this product. What this product is doing is kepping track of a user's pst files no matter where they login. Each user gets a home drive mapped inside of a logon script. Each person's pst files are stored in an exchange folder inside of their own home drive.

I need to use group policy to do away with this redfox product. I am looking for a policy setting that forces their outlook to look into the location I mentioned. A system variable can be used since everyone's should be the same. I noticed the "Default location for PST files" policy, but that only sets a default. The only thing that I have been able to come up with is one of the following:

1) Script a registry entry to do it and include the script as a local machine logon script via GPO.

2) Possibly use the Profile entry in AD. I am not sure that this would do what I want it to, but I thought it may. If I implemented roaming profiles and specified the "%HOMEDRIVE%" as the address for the profile, I was wondering if this would cause outlook to automatically look in that location for pst files.

Either way, I am looking for a hands-off GPO solution to ridding ourselves of redfox. Any ideas are definetely appreciated.

I know centrally located pst's are not a good idea, but this is not an option for me to change. I need a way to make sure that all email users at this location can logon to any computer and maintain access to their mailbox and pst without manual intervention. Any ideas are appreciated.

 

[markdmac]

I did some digging looking for a thread that dealt with this and am having trouble finding that thread, but this link should help yuou out.

http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/prf.htm

Create a PRF file that you can have imported during user login. This will setup Outlook without user intervention. You can then script the location of the PST as we discussed in the original thread. (The PRF may even give you that option, I am not sure).

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[djtech2k]

I will read your posted link, but I was a bit afraid of prf's honestly. I say that because I saw some prf config file templates and they had MANY settings in there. The thing is that I only want to specify the pst locations and make sure they access their mailbox. The rest I want to stay the way it is now. In other words, I am afraid if I did a prf, I would be overwriting the other user settings that I do not want to change.

 

[djtech2k]

I guess I am also unclear as to what the roaming profile will do for me. If I establish a path in the profile field for a user, I realize everything will now reside on the server.

If I change the profile path, would all the current settings be transferred to the homedir, or will that have to be done manually? If it is transferred, then all I would need to edit is the path to pst and the mailbox name/server. Does that sound correct? Or is there more or less?

I am really running myself in a circle here. Its just that this is kinda difficult to test before doing it for real.

 

[markdmac]

Why don't you create a test user account and work with that?

Establishing a roaming profile helps the user in that they will not need to go through a setup with each login onto a new machine.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[djtech2k]

Thats my plan as of now.

 

[djtech2k]

ok. I have been testing a little. In my tests, it appears that once I establish the profile path, everything is carried over to the remote profile except for the pst files.

So, I have to prepare for 2 scenarios here:

1) If the existing email profile ios carried over to the remote profile path, how can I just change the path to pst? I am looking into the prf, BUT it looks like I have to do a whole custom profile and I cannot just seemlesly make that small edit for the path. How can i do this?

2) If their existing profile is blank and handled solely by somethign within the redfox program, I may have to script the whole email profile. If that is the case, I am not sure what to look out for. I have been tetsing a coupld small prf's but each time I try to inport it into outlook, it starts the profile wizard and it has no settings defined. I need this to be seemless to users.

 

[djtech2k]

update. When I tried my prf by commandline:

outlook /importprf path_to_prf.prf

It did not work and just brought up the wizard. When i navigated to the prf and double-clicked it, outlook asked if I wanted to run the profile edit and I said yes, it worked fine. Any ideas why that would happen? Is there a better command line option to use to suppress prompting and make it work?

Like I said before, I may only want to just add the pst file location and thats it.

 

[markdmac]

So what happens if you try to just execute the PRF from a command line?

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[djtech2k]

Thats what I was describing in my previous post. It opens outlook with the new setup wizard.

 

[markdmac]

Not exactly. You posted that you ran Outlook with the switch to import. If you were able to just double click the PRF then it has some fiel associations that made it executable. So what happens if you try to execute just the PRF from a command line?

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark

 

[djtech2k]

o, sorry. I did not try it via command line, just calling the prf file. I will try it tomorrow when I get in, but I expect it to launch outlook in the same way.

 

[djtech2k]

I tried it today. If I call the prf file via command line it does the same as if I double-clicked it. It prompts me to accept changes to the outlook profile and then applies.

It wourks, but I need to make it silently.

 

[xmsre]

Get yourself the Office Deployment Kit, and use the Outlook Maintenance Wizard to push the change.

 

[djtech2k]

I have to implement a policy to make these changes, so I need the change to happen simultanously. That will be difficult to do if it is a completely seperate process.

 

[djtech2k]

Any other suggestions on how to handle this? I am now getting back to this after some other fires to put out.

Anyway, in my previous test, I setup an outlook profile on my machine. I got email, etc. I then changed his AD properties to point to a roaming profile. When I logged in next, I found that the mailbox was still mapped, but the PST path was bad. So, I created a prf and was able to import it and use it on another machine. The problem there was that I have to manually double-click the prf and approve outlook to use it. I need to script it somehow so it is transparent to the user. Any ideas?

I am going to test more also to make sure that it is common that after having an email profile in one place, I map to a roaming profile and the email box follows. I am not sure if that is common or if it was just a bad test that i did.

 

[djtech2k]

I am still stuck on this. Anyone have any idea how to force outlook to import a prf without having to provide any user input?

 

[nickpark]

as xmsre said, use the custom maintenance wizard.

would bunging it in a login script not be ok?

 

[djtech2k]

ok, this may work, but now I have another issue. Whenever I import the prf file to outlook, it creates a "backup" profile. My plan was to run this as a logon script or GPO logon script. If I do this, each user will get hundreds of email profiles on their computer. I have tried the prf file with the overwrite (new profile) options and the append.

Any idea how to get outlook to NOT create the backup profiles?

 

[markdmac]

Create a custom registry key to be able to determine that the script has already run on a PC. That way you can see that it has run and skip the import.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark