Intune - Students (and staff) Desktop Icons

[petben]

Hello, using GPO we redirect the users desktop folders from a share to keep it tidy and distribute shortcuts. Although we can add shortcuts to Intune managed devices using scripts, it does not support redirected folders like GPO, so students can create x hundred shortcuts on their desktop and and Onedrive by default will move it with them.

 

So, has had anyone had any success (or pushback from users) with turning off OneDrive desktop folder sync, setting permisisons on the desktop folder or getting rid of ALL desktop icons and just controlling the start menu icons. Maybe something else..?

 

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[itskdog]

We moved all our desktop shortcuts to our browser homepage (in our case, RM Unify) when moving to Intune last year.

 

If you don't have a custom page at the moment, make a page on SharePoint and use that.

 

Quicker to update, no worries about waiting for an app update to be processed by IME, less clutter on the desktop.

[KK20]

are you running hybrid or are you fully cloud?  The reason I say is that redirecting a desktop location is a matter of changing a registry entry, the issue is where to redirect them too.  In a previous establishment, on the full cloud intune managed devices, I had a master script that would sort out "nuances that I used to perform with AD", one of which was a redirected desktop.  This would be a local folder with read only NTFS rights (for the majority).  The folder was kept up to date from an intune policy.  Dont forget to set another registry entry to discount the desktop from KFR.   No pushback from users because that is how things had always been done.   

[Langella]

We deploy an XML with what we want their Task Bar and Start Menu to look like. They can change and adapt to their needs if they want.  We do not block students to put stuff on their desktop,  If its easier for them to do it why blocking it?  We do have One Drive backup off which brings back the Desktop, Documents and Pictures to their compute, so no redirection scripts are required.      In relation to the shortcuts you need to deploy for School applications you can drop them in their browser Favorites or create a SharePoint Intranet to get displayed when they open their browser.