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User Home Directory Configuration

To enable the User Home Directory feature, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Workspace Control Console and navigate to Composition > Actions By Type > Files and Folders > User Home Directory > Settings tab.

  2. Set the User Home Directory option to Enabled.

After enabling the User Home Directory feature, configure the location of the home directory by setting the Default home drive option to a drive letter from B to Z.

The drive letter of each end-user's home directory must match the Home Folder letter specified for that user in Active Directory. To specify different letter for different end-users, navigate to the Settings tab and use one of the following three methods:

  • Resolve home drive from Active Directory — Workspace Control first tries to retrieve the user's home drive letter from the User Profile Properties from Active Directory.

  • Use %reshomedrive% if available — Workspace Control creates exceptions to the default drive-to-home directory configuration by using the %reshomedrive% environment variable.

  • Use Workspace Containers to configure exceptions to the global settings of a feature.

Model Directory Configuration

Before configuring User Home Directory actions, specify which resources can be used in these actions. Configure this by setting up a model directory under the Files tab. The model directory contains all resources which can be chosen when configuring User Home Directory actions. The \Personal Settings and \Windows folders are created by default in a new site.

To create a new folder in the model directory, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Files tab.

  2. Right-click on the folder where the new folder will be created and select New Folder from the context-menu.

  3. Enter an appropriate name for the new folder.

To add a new resource to the model directory, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click on the folder where the new resource will be added and select New from the context-menu.

  2. In the Select File(s)/Folder(s) window, select the desired resources and select OK.

To save resources to another location than the locations specified in the model directory, right-click the resource and select Save Resource As.

Resources used in global or application based User Home Directory actions are marked with . Renaming or deleting such resources is not possible.

Action Configuration

To configure a User Home Directory action, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to the Actions tab.

  2. Right-click in the right-pane and select New from the context-menu.

  3. In the New home directory object window, select next to the Object field, under Properties.

  4. In the Select File/Folder window, select the desired resource and select OK.

  5. In the New home directory object window, select OK.

When end-users start a Workspace Control managed session or application, the actions are processed in the order they appear under the Actions tab. If necessary, change the order to ensure the correct processing.

When configuring User Home Directory actions, you can use environment variables (for example: %username%).

When configuring the settings of a resource, the option Replace with %username% allows replacing the name of the resource with the username. This is useful when copying files or folders with the same name as the user's logon name to the user's home directory.

Example

If administrators want to copy a log file to the home directory of users Jackson, Greene and Smith, they must ensure that the model directory contains the files jackson.log, greene.log, and smith.log. When these users then log on, the correct files with their login name are copied to their home directory. This means that there is no need to create an entry for each individual user (jackson.log, greene.log, smith.log), but instead only create one entry with %username%.log.

By specifying an Alias for the resource, the original resource name is overwritten when it is copied to the home directory of a user. This is useful if the home directory of a user must contain a specific resource whose values depend on the group membership of the user.

Example

The administrator of D-Energy has added two INI files to the model directory of Home Directory Maintenance: app_group1.ini and app_group2.ini.

  • app_group1.ini has value green.

  • app_group2.ini has value blue.

  • If user petersent logs on, who belongs to group 1, app_group1.ini must be copied to his home directory and renamed to app.ini.

  • If user williamsj logs on, who belongs to group 2, app_group2.ini must be copied to his home directory and renamed to app.ini.

To set up this scenario, configure the Alias option to app.ini for both files. This ensures that the home directory of user petersent contains an app.ini file with value green and the home directory of user williamsj contains an app.ini file with value blue.

In the Action field, select what action to take depending on whether you selected a folder or a file in the Object field:

  • Always copy

  • Compare file datetime before copy

  • Copy if target does not exist

  • Delete

  • Set specific values in INI-file (only for files)

    Select to open the Set specific values in INI-file window, which allows you to configure INI-file values. After configuring INI-file values, select Run once if these values should be set only once.

This option specifies the required connection state that allows the setting to be applied. For more details, see Connection States.

For example, this allows the configuration of settings that are only applied if a computer has an online connection state.

  • When configuring the pwruser.ini as a User Home Directory object, the value in the Target field cannot be changed. This field refers to the central storage location as defined under Composition > User Settings > Settings tab and the pwruser.ini file is always stored there, even if the User Settings feature is disabled.

  • When creating a new Datastore, a default setting is added for backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Workspace Control. This default setting, with object type \, specifies the existing model directory that must be copied for all users and compares the file datetime before copying. When creating settings on different levels, disable this default setting. Otherwise all files and folders in the model directory are copied to the user's home directory, which renders other settings useless.

  • The user's Workspace Analysis stores all User Home Directory actions that have been taken for the user. To view what User Home Directory settings apply to the user, navigate to Composition > Actions By Type > Files and Folders > User Home Directory. To view what files or folders have been copied to the user's home directory, navigate to Diagnostics > Event Log. For more details, see Workspace Analysis.

Actions can be moved from one Workspace Control application to another, from an application to global level, or from global level to a specific application. To move an action, right-click the action (or multiple selected actions) and select Move from the context-menu.