Shortcuts to multiple student area's?

[steele_uk]

I am trying to be helpful by creating a shortcut to a students home drives but by class.





Originally i was going to create a batch file that did this on a class group

Net use F:\\server\student1 share
Net use g:\\ server\student2 share etc...

except i wouldn't have enough drive letters

know someone must have done something like this and that i am not thinking outside the box.

I alreay have a map to 'All students', but the staff are finding that overwhelming

Any ideas?

TIA

[plexer]

Just use shortcuts to the unc's instead?

They can then be put in your shared area for all staff?

Ben

[plexer]

As in right click -> new shortcut.

Ben

[Domino]

How about in the 'all students' directory just grouping them in folders by class?

[Hightower]

How about in the 'all students' directory just grouping them in folders by class?

And then deny them access to the ones they don't need (i.e. only allow them to access the folder for their year)

[User3204]

We store user folders in "d: \ users \ yearofentry \ form \ username \"

The for the restricted number of staff that are allowed read-access we map the "d: \ users \" to a drive letter ( H: ).. now they just complain they don't know what forms people are in.
I do provide a link called "Year 07" that sends to "h: \ 08 \" etc.. but they are getting confused that year 8 started in 07 and year 7 started in 08..

If all your user folders are within the same "d: \ users \" (or wherever), and you don't want to move them, you could create another share called "home" map this to another drive letter, and then within this create a folder per form/class /year, then within these folders create links to the users UNC path a la "\\servername\usershare".

[mac_shinobi]

presuming you have an OU for each year intake do the mapped drives get mapped on a per year basis ( in which case you could make a script for each year and assign it as a logon script per each OU ) or can you explain in detail how you want the drives mapped exactly just so I am clear on how you do it.

[steele_uk]

Thanks for the replies, the shortcuts is something i may have a go at.

Sorry about not explaining very well.

Our students do sit in a yeargroup OU and their Homedrives are in subfolders of intake year.

The unc to their root would be \\server\students\08smithjon$

So we haven't grouped them by any particular class.

I would like to give the teachers of DIDA classes, a simple way of browsing all their DIDA students work without trawling through 160 accounts.

Example a folder called DIDA class 1 with shortcuts to all the relavant student homedrives inside.

I hope that makes more sense.

I do think the shortcut scenario will work, it will be a bit of a long slog to set them all up for the three relevant teachers, but is seems the only solution.

I was thinking about a way of publishing DIDA students as web folders, but my knowledge on this is minimal.

Thanks.

[steele_uk]

Done thanks,

Just created multiple shortcuts (as suggested - thanks Ben) on the targeted students from the Yeargroup container and placed the shortcuts in a staff share under the a class folder.

Crude, but is eactly what they were after.

Cheers

[plexer]

Cool glad you got it sorted, don't forget you can also use the thanks button to thank people.

Ben

[srochford]

If all the pupils in the class are in a security group then you could script this:

The code below assumes you're looking for a form called "form7a" and you want a set of shortcuts creating in C:\temp\shortcuts - amend as appropriate.

It queries AD to get the distinguished name of the group; having got that, it gets a list of members and for each member finds the home drive and then creates a shortcut for each one.

If you don't have the pupils in groups based on forms then I think it would be worth doing; it makes all sorts of things easier!

sGroup="form7a"
sRootFolder="c:\temp\shortcuts\"
sFolder=sRootFolder & sGroup

set oShell=createobject("wscript.shell")
Set oFSO=wscript.createobject("scripting.filesystemobject")
Set oRootDSE=GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
sRoot=oRootDSE.Get("DefaultNamingContext")

Set oConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
oConn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
oConn.Open
Set oCommand = CreateObject("ADODB.Command")
oCommand.ActiveConnection = oConn
oCommand.properties("Page Size")=100

oCommand.CommandText = "<LDAP://" & sRoot & ">;(&(objectCategory=group)(name=" & sGroup & "));distinguishedname;subTree"
Set oRS = oCommand.Execute
if not ors.eof then
	sDN1=oRS("distinguishedname")
else
  wscript.echo "No such group"
  wscript.quit
end if

if not ofso.folderexists(sFolder) then ofso.createfolder(sFolder)

set oGroup=getobject("LDAP://" & sDN1)
for each oMember in oGroup.members
  sDN2=oMember.distinguishedname
  set oUser=getobject("LDAP://" & sDN2)
  sHome=oUser.HomeDirectory
  sName=oUser.DisplayName
  set oShortcut=oShell.createshortcut(sFolder & "\" & sName & ".lnk")
  oShortcut.description="Home folder for " & sName
  oShortcut.targetpath=sHome
  oShortcut.save
next