Hi

We are shortly moving our organisation to a purpose built location. We are
a counselling charity call centre and have started to employe inbound
consultants. Our central office will also be moving in shortly. I am
looking at setting logon scripts to set file and printer shares as well as
roaming profiles for the telephone consultants. I would be interested on
the communitys views on what should or should not be included in the
scripts - access to Internet Options, allowing users to set own desktops (or
not) etc.

I would also be interested in where I could go to learn about such things
and whether a batch file or vbscript woulfd be better. Server 2003 and all
clients XP.

Thanks
Tony

Tony wrote:

> We are shortly moving our organisation to a purpose built location. We
> are a counselling charity call centre and have started to employe inbound
> consultants. Our central office will also be moving in shortly. I am
> looking at setting logon scripts to set file and printer shares as well as
> roaming profiles for the telephone consultants. I would be interested on
> the communitys views on what should or should not be included in the
> scripts - access to Internet Options, allowing users to set own desktops
> (or not) etc.
>
> I would also be interested in where I could go to learn about such things
> and whether a batch file or vbscript woulfd be better. Server 2003 and
> all clients XP.

The language you use (batch or VBScript or whatever) depends on what you
want to do and what language you are familiar with. VBScript is more
powerful. If all clients are XP or above, it would make sense to use Group
Policy to configure logon scripts. I have an FAQ linked here:

http://www.rlmueller.net/LogonScriptFAQ.htm

Generally, configuration changes might be done in a logon script, but
everything should be initially setup with some other mechanism. If
configuration changes are made I like to have some way to tell which
computers/users have the changes, not just to avoid repeating the
modification, but also so I know when to remove the relevant code. I code so
the script writes to a log file, for example. I try to have the script check
if the change has already been made. All changes to the computer should be
done with a Startup script. Changes to the user should be done in a logon
script. Most changes to the computer can be done remotely in bulk.

The most common tasks in logon scripts are mapping drives, mapping printers,
setting default printers, making sure printer drivers are installed, and
perhaps logging information. If anything depends on group membership, you
either need third party tools and should use VBScript.

I have example VBScript logon scripts that map drives and printers according
to group membership linked here:

http://www.rlmueller.net/freecode2.htm

--
Richard Mueller
Microsoft MVP Scripting and ADSI
Hilltop Lab - http://www.rlmueller.net
--

"Richard Mueller [MVP]" <rlmueller-nospam@ameritech.nospam.net> wrote in
message news:eO6Z0KU%23HHA.3800@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Tony wrote:
>
>> We are shortly moving our organisation to a purpose built location. We
>> are a counselling charity call centre and have started to employe inbound
>> consultants. Our central office will also be moving in shortly. I am
>> looking at setting logon scripts to set file and printer shares as well
>> as roaming profiles for the telephone consultants. I would be interested
>> on the communitys views on what should or should not be included in the
>> scripts - access to Internet Options, allowing users to set own desktops
>> (or not) etc.
>>
>> I would also be interested in where I could go to learn about such things
>> and whether a batch file or vbscript woulfd be better. Server 2003 and
>> all clients XP.
>
> The language you use (batch or VBScript or whatever) depends on what you
> want to do and what language you are familiar with. VBScript is more
> powerful. If all clients are XP or above, it would make sense to use Group
> Policy to configure logon scripts. I have an FAQ linked here:
>
> http://www.rlmueller.net/LogonScriptFAQ.htm
>
> Generally, configuration changes might be done in a logon script, but
> everything should be initially setup with some other mechanism. If
> configuration changes are made I like to have some way to tell which
> computers/users have the changes, not just to avoid repeating the
> modification, but also so I know when to remove the relevant code. I code
> so the script writes to a log file, for example. I try to have the script
> check if the change has already been made. All changes to the computer
> should be done with a Startup script. Changes to the user should be done
> in a logon script. Most changes to the computer can be done remotely in
> bulk.
>
> The most common tasks in logon scripts are mapping drives, mapping
> printers, setting default printers, making sure printer drivers are
> installed, and perhaps logging information. If anything depends on group
> membership, you either need third party tools and should use VBScript.
>
> I have example VBScript logon scripts that map drives and printers
> according to group membership linked here:
>
> http://www.rlmueller.net/freecode2.htm
>
> --
> Richard Mueller
> Microsoft MVP Scripting and ADSI
> Hilltop Lab - http://www.rlmueller.net
> --

One further bit of advice I would add is that the logon script should be
kept as simple as possible. Possibly the worst reason to put any code into a
logon script is this: "because it *can* be done that way".

/Al