KACE Desktop Authority 11.2.1 - Getting Started Guide

Root Mapping Home Directories

Root Mapping, step-by-step

The Root Mapping concept originates from the Novell Netware operating system. It allows a drive to be mapped to a directory that looks and acts like a root directory instead of a subdirectory.

Root Mapping to the user’s home directory provides a simple path to the directory. Since all other users’ home directories on the drive are invisible to the user, there is no confusion as to where the directory is. The user does not have to scroll through a list of folders to search for their own folder. This makes it faster to find what they are looking for.

For example, using Desktop Authority, you can “root map” drive letter H: to each user’s home directory and then have Microsoft Office open/save paths default to H:\Documents; you can redirect Internet Explorer’s bookmarks to H:\Bookmarks; you can create Outlook/Exchange mail profiles on-the-fly and store the personal address book and/or personal folders on H:\Exchange; and you can redirect all your shell folder pointers to H:\ShellFolders. Simply put, you end up with the ability for any user to logon to any machine and retrieve all their settings -- without a visit from the network administrator and without using Roaming Profiles!

1. Create a base share point for your user's home directories.
2. Open Windows Explorer on the server to house home directories. Create a folder called "Users".
3. Right click the Users folder you just created and select the Sharing tab. Share this folder as "Users".

   Note: You may elect to have multiple base share points spread across one or many servers. Since Desktop Authority can use dynamic variables when mapping drives, you will only need a single entry on the Drive Mappings object to accommodate any configuration you wish. If you have hundreds or thousands of users, you may want to create a more complex "user tree". For example: You may create a "users" folder. Under the users folder, you create "faculty" and "students". Under the students folder, you create "sophomores", "freshmen", "juniors" and "seniors" folders. In this more complex example, the (4) sub-folders of "students" would be the base share points.Replace this text with a description of a feature that is noteworthy.

4. Create your users with User Manager for Domains (UMD) or Active Directory.

   When creating users with UMD, the key element to root mapping home directories is how you populate the fields of the Profile page for each user.

   If your ultimate goal is to map drive letter H: to each user's home directory, choose a different letter here in UMD.

5. Now specify the path to the user's home directory. Note that there are three logical pieces to the user's home path (\\server1\users\%username%), each separated by a backslash.

   The Desktop Authority dynamic variable for this entire home share string is $HomePath. Separating this path into three logical pieces, the first piece "\\server" is the name of the server that contains the base share point we created in step 1 (The Desktop Authority dynamic variable, less the leading backslashes is $HomeServer). The second piece "users" is the base share point (Desktop Authority dynamic variable: $HomeBase). The last piece is the actual home directory for the user (Desktop Authority dynamic variable: $HomeDir). UMD will automatically translate the %username% environment variable to the user's logon name when you press OK to exit this screen.

   When you press OK and save the user, User Manager for Domains will automatically create the user's home directory based on the information entered in this dialog.

6. You must grant NTFS permissions to an administrative group so that you can share the user's home directory, and allow your third-party backup program to read any documents stored in this directory.

   After you grant Full Control NTFS permissions to each users home directory for your administrative group, you can then share each user's home directory.

7. Apply NTFS permissions and share each user's home directory.

   Launch Windows Explorer and expand the Users folder to show the users home directories beneath it. Right click on each user home directory and select Properties. Then select the Security tab.

8. Add your administrative group (e.g. Domain Admins) to the list with Full Control rights.
9. Click Apply and then select the Sharing tab.
10. For security, it is recommended that when you create shares for each user's home directory, you make them hidden shares. A hidden share does not show up when your clients browse the network using Windows Explorer and/or Network Neighborhood. A hidden share has a dollar sign appended to the end of the actual share name. Ex. WClint$

Now you can configure Desktop Authority's Drive Mapping object.

Now that the user and their home directory have been created, secured and shared, we can configure Desktop Authority to map a drive letter to the "root" of their home directory.

1. Launch the Desktop Authority Manager, from Profiles, select the profile and then the Drive Mappings object. Insert a new configuration element.
2. Specify drive H for the drive letter and a shared folder of \\$HomeServer\$HomeDir$$.

   Notice how we can leverage the use of Desktop Authority's dynamic variables so that a single entry to the Drive Mappings object will accommodate mapping a drive letter to each user's home directory no matter how many servers and/or base share points exist on your network.

   Also, note the use of the trailing double dollar sign. This is due to the way in which the KiXtart engine interprets strings during execution. Since dynamic variables begin with a {$}, we enter a double dollar sign {$$} so that KiXtart knows we don't want to insert a variable at this point -- we simply want a dollar sign appended to the share (i.e. hidden share).

3. Save the changes, replicate and exit. Logon from a client to verify your home mapping works as expected.