Deploy start tile with network path

[Sheridan]

I'm not sure if this is even possible, as I've had such poor experience with deploying start menu tiles in windows 10, but I'd like to deploy a tile that is a shortcut located on a server share.

 

I've added the tile like this:

 

Needless to say it doesn't appear, but has anyone managed to do something like this? Ideally I want to add a selection of website shortcuts to their Start tiles, but it seems like the .lnk file has to be in their or the All Users profile on the local machine for it to work?

Edited January 14, 2020 by Sheridan

[simpsonj]

I have found a much higher success rate if I copy the link to the PC and reference that instead.

 

For example, I have a GPO that creates C:\Shortcuts. Then I have another GPO that creates shortcuts into that folder, which I then put into the xml file. Why this works better than network shares, I couldn't tell you, but I nicked the idea of off someone from Edugeek and it has worked for me.

 

That said, I haven't tried it with URLs...

[Sheridan]

.url and .lnk files seem to work as long as they are copied locally, I've managed to get that working.

 

The issue that screwed mine up was because one of the .url files had an ampersand in it - something like 'Estates & Buildings.url' which works fine on the desktop and start menu but completely knackered the tiles when added!

 

Removed the ampersand and it worked OK - which is odd as the path name for these files is all in quotes anyway.

[Liam]

This does work but I could only get it to work if the same shortcut existed in the start menu.

[ComboSmith]

We have a Websites folder tile set up, as long as the .url or .lnk files are somewhere the users can see they have worked for us without any issues.