Client Document Redirection

  • Article

You can redirect all users' My Documents folders from their client computers to a shared folder on the computer running Windows Small Business Server 2003 where they can be backed up regularly. A cached copy of My Documents is stored on the users' computers. Users can work on documents even when disconnected from the network. Each time they log off of or log on to the network, the copy of their My Documents folder on their client computer synchronizes with the server copy.

Redirecting users' documents to the server can use a lot of disk space. It is recommended that you use disk quotas to help control the amount of disk space occupied by users' files. The disk partition where the Users shared folder is located has the following quota settings by default:

  • Disk space is limited to: 1 GB
  • Warning level is set to: 900 MB

When you enable folder redirection, the My Documents folder is redirected to the folder called Users Shared Folders by default. If you redirect the My Documents folder to another location, you need to first set the correct permissions on the folder.

To set permissions on the shared network folder where each user's My Documents folder is redirected

  1. Click Start, and then click Windows Explorer.

  2. Right-click the folder to which you want to redirect the user's My Documents folder, and then click Sharing and Security.

  3. On the Sharing tab, choose Share this folder, click Permissions. Add the following users and groups if they are not present, and then assign them Full Control permissions:

    • Domain Users
    • Domain Admins
    • SBS Folder Operators

Note

It is recommended that you remove any previous users or groups from the list of group or user names.

  1. On the Security tab, click Advanced, and then clear the check box for Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate to this object and all child objects. When prompted for how to assign the permissions, click Remove.

  2. Click Add, add the following users and groups if they are not present, and then assign them Full Control permissions:

    • Creator Owner
    • Domain Admins
    • SBS Folder Operators
    • SYSTEM

  3. Click Add, and then type Domain Users. In the Permissions Entry for All Users dialog box, click the Apply onto drop down box, click This folder only, and then select the following:

    • List Folder/Read Data
    • Read Attributes
    • Create Folders/Append Data