Poll: Profile Type?

[Gongalong]

See the poll below

[garethEds]

We keep the profile field blank in the AD so I guess use nothing. Everything is done via GPO. Not sure whether this is the right thing to do or not.

 

Gareth

[3s-gtech]

Staff - local (as would yours be @garethedmondson). This suits as they tend to stick to one PC, allowing them to heavily use it and maintain fast logons. Very high compatibility with software.

Students - mandatory. Used to use redirected AppData, but now use local as it didn't work with CS6. Very quick logons with high compatibility. No issues with Windows 10 for us. Suited to using a different PC each time as the profile is cleaned at logoff.

[robyholmes]

Roaming for both Staff & Students. All folders are redirected including AppData. Looking to introduce UEV when we move to Windows 10 to reduce use of the roaming profile. We don't tend to have size issues with the profiles, more just login or application issues which mean we need to reset the whole profile.

[synaesthesia]

Mandatory for everyone. Quick, reliable, adds a touch of security.

[angrycomputingteacher]

We are using Local profiles for both Staff and Students. Although, I am looking at using Mandatory profiles soon.

[Asgard]

Mandatory for everyone. Quick, reliable, adds a touch of security.

 

This for me [emoji106]

 

Was debating ditching them for Creators update onwards but they seem to be smoother to setup in our environment.

[gshaw]

Local here, used to run Mandatory for classroom machines at my last place but Win10 seems to be a pain for profiles these days. Keeping it nice and simple now, less for MS to break that way (!)

[Gongalong]

I'm moving away from RM Ranger, which sets a mandatory start menu (and desktop), and also moving from Win 7 to 10. A couple of big projects!

 

I had initially planned to go with roaming profiles and the default PC start menu, but have been affected by this problem for the latter http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-10/173918-start-menu-roaming-profiles-fix.html Also the start menu's a bit of a mess, compared with the organised version we created under RM Ranger.

 

I'm trying to decide what the best option would be. It sounds like it could be mandatory, but it seems like quite a faff to setup. Redirected start menu sound like the other good option, assuming that it pulls the start menu from a specified location?

[mrbios]

Students Mandatory

Staff local

 

No appdata redirect on either, everything else is redirected.

 

I tend to avoid roaming profiles like the plague since the late XP days, more hassle than they're worth most of the time it seems. Although I'm guessing some of you are having good success with them going by the poll.

[win]

Looking to introduce UEV when we move to Windows 10 to reduce use of the roaming profile.

 

Me too! Is it possible to add UEV to the poll?

[Gongalong]

You can't edit a poll once setup, AFAIK.

 

Maybe I should be looking at UE-V also...

[arron]

UE-V here. Used to use roaming profiles, so much space was saved by moving off of it.

[Gongalong]

Am I right in thinking that UE-V can't be used to prescribe start menus? I couldn't spot any way of doing it.

 

To get folder redirected start menus to work in Win 10 1703 I've had to switch to local profiles.

[dry]

Mandatory for students, roaming for staff.

 

Out of interest, for those who use mandatory for all users- what solution do you use for when staff work offsite?

[garethEds]

UE-V here. Used to use roaming profiles, so much space was saved by moving off of it.

@arron - Please tell me more about UE-V and how you use it. Is it something I should be looking at? Any links or training videos?

 

Cheers

 

Gareth

[Gongalong]

I thought the Technet pages were pretty good https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hh943107.aspx

[arron]

Am I right in thinking that UE-V can't be used to prescribe start menus? I couldn't spot any way of doing it.

 

To get folder redirected start menus to work in Win 10 1703 I've had to switch to local profiles.

 

We swapped to using registry to redirect the start menu a while ago, i believe due to it seeming to not work at all via the folder redirection settings. That combined with a start layout policy is how we handle our start menus.

Edited June 27, 2017 by arron

[Gongalong]

I've got it to work via folder redirection, but only by switching to local profiles. This isn't a showstopper, so proceeding on this basis for the moment. It's going to be a bit of a faff deleting all the other common menu items that Win 10 adds, but presumably a logon script can be used to delete that.

[garethEds]

I thought the Technet pages were pretty good https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hh943107.aspx

 

Thanks @Gongalong

 

I see there is no template listed for Office 2016. That's a shame.

 

Gareth

[arron]

Office 2016:

 

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Authored-Office-2016-32-0dc05cd8

[arron]

@arron - Please tell me more about UE-V and how you use it. Is it something I should be looking at? Any links or training videos?

 

Cheers

 

Gareth

 

We have a network share for the UE-V templates and the profile data itself. I had to do a bit of fiddling to get the clients to load from the network copy of the templates though, as in setting the GPOs in a certain way and adding a scheduled task to get the computers to refresh their data.

 

I used the GPO setting "Computer configuration -> administrative templates -> system -> user profiles -> only allow local profiles" to override our roaming profile settings on the computers where i wanted to test UE-V, as UE-V gets seen as local profile as far as windows is concerned.

 

I also used the policy "Computer configuration -> administrative templates -> system -> user profiles -> delete user profiles older than the specified number of days on system restart" to force the profiles to stay fresh.

[arron]

The big plus for us though was that it took our server side profile folder from ~90GB down to ~ 15GB.