Desktop/laptop offline files

[leco]

Not sure how to explain this so it may be a little long winded - sorry.

Teachers have laptops with files set to be available offline - so they can work at home. That's fine if they only work on their own laptop. When they "borrow" another one or work on a desktop machine their roaming profile appears to be setting offline files for that machine as well. The setting appears to stay like that after the teacher has logged off - next user comes along and has to endure a long synchcronisation both at log on and log off - and it's not even their own files. Issues arise with db files that are not available offline - so new user complains that something is "broken".

Is there a way for the roaming profile to detect if its on a desktop or a laptop and set offline files off or on depending? Hope that makes some sort of sense to someone.

Me I'd like to set everyone to not have files available off line but instructions from above say otherwise. Still it's me that gets earache and the headache.

[DaveP]

Not sure I get this.

When our staff laptops were synchronising MyDocuments for the 'Owner' of the laptop and that laptop was 'borrowed' by another member of staff the synchronisation would be attempted for the original member of staff [laptop 'Owner'] but it would fail because the staff member borrowing the laptop would not have access to the MyDocuments the laptop was trying to synchronise [phew]

We have ditched synchronisation now. If they want to logon locally [off the network] they have to know the username and password of the user created the owner of the laptop by Network Support. If they want to work on a particular file they have to remember to copy it from the network before leaving school that day.

[SYNACK]

Two part question there:
Part One: Laptops with multiple users, the short answer is no, by design it will sync for any user with offline files enabled security should stop this but it will still lag and complain when it tries. This will cache all staff that logon, we got round this by training - read dire warnings about laptop speed - and resetting the offline file cache when a laptop changed hands which clears out all of the files and syn relationships so it is only the one user. I assume that you are still on XP as Vista has much better handling of this.

If you really wanted to configure this at all costs it would be possible to have the offline sync configured in a seporate policy duplicate it for each staff member then put each laptop in a seporate OU, then you would apply the appropriate offline files policy to each OU and have each security locked to only the desired user. This may also be possible using a wmi filter that picks out the username and only applys for a specific user. Still requires duplicates for each user though.

Question Two Workstations:
Better news here, this bit is easy. All you need to do is disable offline files in the machine policy that applies to the workstations. This should be applied anyway to prevent mishaps and slowdowns.


Your offline files policy for syncing should be applied in the user settings and specify the actions on disconnect as well as administratively assigned offline files. This will stop numerous issues and will also work with Vista / 7 where as machine config assigned offline files does not work with Vista.

[leco]

Thanks Synak - I'll try to get my head round your questions and come back later. At the mo I'm battling with an anti-virus app that won't update, which is slightly more urgent.