Roaming Profiles, Outlook and Exchange

[abuthemagician]

I will be deploying roaming profiles and i need to know if i need to use PST's where i have an exchange server and all my outlook clients connect directly to it. The only users that use chached exchange mode are on laptops and will not be roaming.

 

[mstarrett]

Roaming profiles and PST storage is not a good idea. You loose control over mailbox size and will have to use a central storage area for the PST's. I would avise against that design. Instead of roaming profiles use GOFF PRofiler program and incorparate into favorites in to IE. Use GPO to populate the favorites with the link. Then when a person moves to a new system they click on the link and there email is setup automagically. You can also create a batch file to map drives and connect my documents to personal storage share.

Just an idea.

Mike

 

[abuthemagician]

I used a transform when i installed office to ensure that when a person logs on to a computer with office, when they open outlook, it already knows to use %username% and the name of the exchange server. This should eliminate the need for a 3rd party program i would think

 

[DanMIS]

I use roaming profiles and have users connect directly to the Exchange server. The only problem I have had is when we upgraded machines to XP, sometimes they lost the ability to reconnect to exchange without redoing their profile.

I agree to stay away from PST files. Users don't grasp the "Don't let it get over 2 Gb" rule, and end up locking them up.

Dan

 

[abuthemagician]

great! so i will not worry about it then.

 

[DanMIS]

Another space-saving idea we do (may not be necessary or possible in your environment):

We don't replicate "my music" or "my pictures" to the server. It is a group policy item to change that. We found a lot of people were saving music to the server inadvertantly.

And sometimes roaming profiles just fail to replicate. Just a warning that they're not perfect.

Dan

 

[abuthemagician]

thanks for the comment dan. I have played with them a little bit in a test lab, but nothing like what i will be doing now.