Profile folder creation

[enjay]

At present, when we create new users, the redirected folders in their user profile aren't created until they first log in to a domain computer. From September, every student will have a personal laptop with them, so will only use a desktop PC in Computing or infrequently in a few subjects with specialist software (e.g. Music, Art, Tech) so I’d like to remove the requirement for students to log in to a desktop first. What do we need to change about our profile settings in order to achieve this, and what are the implications of such a change?

[DavR]

Why would you want/need to do this?

 

Profiles are created at logon only, I don't think there's an inbuilt way of pre-creating them. The permissions involved are fiddly enough that I really wouldn't bother unless you've a very specific usage case to do it.

[enjay]

Why would you want/need to do this?

 

I'm starting to question myself on that too! It just seems sensible to have the redirected folders in place from the start, rather than having them created days/weeks/months after the student joins. Currently we force a password change on first login too, but we could get Office365 doing that instead of the domain computers.

[thimon]

We have redirected user folders for all users to OneDrive, i.e. desktop, documents, etc, with the folders created within the user OneDrive profile on logon. If a user never logs into a school computer then yes those folders are never created, but meh. Either the user can create their own, or work off their own folder structure.

[DavR]

I'm starting to question myself on that too! It just seems sensible to have the redirected folders in place from the start, rather than having them created days/weeks/months after the student joins. Currently we force a password change on first login too, but we could get Office365 doing that instead of the domain computers.

 

Personally, I wouldn't bother - when they first logon, it will happen automatically.

 

If for some reason you did feel the need, I'd say you'll want to write a PowerShell script or something to automate the creation of folders and setting perms. I'm not aware of a native feature that does this automatically, like AD does with home dirs for instance.