I Don't Understand (and at this point I'm afraid to ask.) Profiles?

[JRA]

I've left this so long, I just don't know I ever fully understood. If anyone has their sock puppets handy, please please help me out.

 

So in the world of W7 we had profiles. Profile path was set in the Profiles tab in AD and we all got our desktop contents etc wherever we logged on.

 

Everything was good and we were all happy then. They were good times and I wasn't confused.

 

Along came W10 and we "just don't use profiles anymore."

 

But... but... how do I get my desktop unified across workstations when I log in? Do I just wanna try and redirect these to a subfolder of my users' home areas? Where does all that old profiles stuff "go to" now?

 

I can't even and I am sorry. I just don't have my head around this.

[Oaktech]

Yes... You need to redirect folders.

 

I use local profiles with a 30-days-unused removal schedule for students and a 90-days-unused schedule for staff all via GPO.

 

Mandatory profiles are still a thing, roaming profiles are just about still a thing, but they are prone to failure and generally a bad idea, User Experience Virtulisation is a thing, but I decided it was too complicated to bother with.

[JRA]

Thanks so so much. Maybe I was overthinking it.

 

It's literally just redirect folders and "do without" now?

[Norphy]

Folder redirection carries its own risks and drawbacks, especially on laptops which are taken away from the building. There are apps which don't work properly if AppData is redirection, modern Adobe stuff among them, and the MS Teams client can do funny things if AppData is redirected as well, if it's being used on more than one machine.

 

I think the only folder I'd think about redirecting these days is possibly the home drive, and even these days with OneDrive being able to sync the Documents folder etc I'd think twice about it. If you're desperate for a roaming profiles style thing, U-EV is worth a look (It's similar to Roaming Profiles in that settings for apps are copied to a user share but it's done on a per-app basis and settings are only roamed if the app is run), Enterprise State Roaming with Azure or if you have an appropriate license, FSLogix where the user profile is stored in a container file which is attached on logon.

[3s-gtech]

Our student profiles have barely changed since W7. Still on (super) mandatory, though staff are on locals. Redirection is pretty limited profile wise for both, just things like Desktop, Documents etc. Adobe software doesn’t always play well with appdata redirection.

 

I just built new profile.man files for each OS and left them stacked up alongside each other.

[ITGURU]

Still using roaming profiles here with windows 10 and server 2019 - not seen any issues.

[Mako]

Did away with full roaming profiles when we jumped to W10. For staff, using redirected folders and appdata only now, no profiles. Touch wood, never had an issue. There are a few people who use laptops, so they make use of Offline Files.

 

Students don't even get redirected appdata so they have next-to-zero profile problems. If there is ever an issue with a student account, deleing the local profile from the PC cures it.