Student Storage of Documents

UPDATE 08-17-2010

Students have been getting redirected to

Path: \\sfs.uni.edu\Students\%USERNAME%\My Documents

Rather than

Path: \\sfs.uni.edu\Students\%USERNAME%\Documents

We are unclear how the group policy got set this way - It was intended for

the already-created \Documents folder to be used.

I have fixed this - HOWEVER, students since 8/8/2010 may now have

documents stored in \My Documents.  Hopefully these students are a

very small minority of users...  They should be to navigate to drive

R: or to the path and move their documents.

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First Post:

8/8/2010

This Setting is now in effect.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject: Students using Windows: My Documents redirect to Student File

Server - August 9th

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:32:40 -0500

Before 'start of business' Monday August 9th (probably will occur late

Sunday night) - we will be linking a group policy to all student

Active Directory user accounts that will redirect the Windows "My

Documents" metafolder to each student's private folder on the student

file server (SFS).

For example - If I were a student, My Documents would point to

\\sfs.uni.edu\students\conklinc\Documents

The benefit for students is that whatever Windows workstation they log

in at will most applications default to this "My Documents" folder to

open/save documents (certainly MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc) - so

Students don't have to manually point to drive R: and navigate into

their \Documents folder

One issues may arise:

The default "My Documents" location for Vista/Win7 is

%USERPROFILE%\Documents - and for Windows XP is %USERPROFILE%\My

Documents (e.g. c:\documents and settings\%username%\My Documents) --

we will NOT set this policy to move the contents from these folders to

the SFS.  Students that have been saving documents in My Documents

will need to navigate to that location on the local disk of the

machine(s) they use.

Recommend to your students that they move needed/desired individual

documents from the workstation(s) to their SFS location.  This can be

done immediately or after the switch (doing so immediately provides

the benefit of their documents being on the redundant SFS disk system

that additionally is backed-up to tape).

Departments/Divisions that desire students on their managed

workstations *not* automatically use the SFS as "My Documents" can

utilize a loop-back group policy to redirect My Documents for all

users of their computers back to a local path.  This is found in User

Configuration\Policies\Windows Settings\Folder Redirection\Documents