Re: Roaming profile learning experience -- PCTECH

See inline.

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Tom Jedrzejewicz <tomjedrz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

As I understand it, Google Apps deals with mail and calendar, but has
nothing which maps to Outlook Tasks (although G Calendar does do task
management poorly) or to Outlook Notes.

Google Apps has tasks, but they're WAY short of being ready-for-prime-time.
For example, you cannot set up a repeating task. That's pretty fundamental
to me.

Part of the deployment of roaming profiles should be the examination of
each
commonly used app and the determination of how to install/configure it in
the best way for the roaming profiles. Typically, the Local Settings
section is *not* replicated because it tends to get filled with temp files
and other replaceable things. With Outlook used against an IMAP server,
the
PST file is replaceable.

I don't think it is just to blame the network guy for not figuring out that
you, after having selected Google Apps as appropriate for your company, use
the biggest Outlook feature *not* supported by Google Apps. If the use of
Outlook tasks is common at your company, Outlook should be implemented to
protect them. But unless tasks were specifically discussed, the network
guy
can't be faulted for not considering them in the Outlook and RP
configuration.

The Network Consultant took responsibility. We initially were looking at
Exchange on site vs hosted Exchange. It was he who brought up the idea of
Google Apps. After investigating GApps, we had specifically discussed
Outlook to a great extent, tasks specifically because that wasn't in GApps.
And we discussed the problems with .pst files in general. He was actually
rather startled by how many backup copies of things I have. For example, I
have 10 full System i onsite at all times. I duplicate the Friday full save
to 2 places offsite _every_ week. The first Friday of every month is also
duplicated onto a 3rd offsite tape. Therefore, in addition to the 10 onsite
tapes, I have 14 offsite. He knows I insist on backups.

Since this issue, I have:

1) Move all .pst files outside the Local Settings folder to a folder that
does get pushed back to the domain server. This means all .pst files are in
at least 2 locations. The domain server already has disk snapshots taken
nightly.
2) In addition, for desktop PC users, the Documents and Settings folder
(and all subfolders) are backed up 5 nights a week to a different folder on
the domain server. This represents a return to the way I was doing it
before we went to our new server structure in July.

Therefore PC desktop users have their .pst file:

1) On their PC
2) On the domain server
3) In 5 different backup files on the domain server
4) In at least 3 snapshot backups of the domain server
5) On 3 tape backups

thin client users have their .pst file:

1) On the terminal services server
2) On the domain server
3) In at least 3 snapshot backups of the terminal services server
4) In at least 3 snapshot backups of the domain server
5) On 3 tape backups of the domain server

The only issue is none of the tapes are offsite. That will get rectified
this week.

BTW -- two thoughts on protecting your tasks. One is ToodleDo (
http://www.toodledo.com/), an internet-based task app that has a
sync-to-outlook agent. I use (and *really like*) it. The other is that
you
should regularly export the tasks to the server or copy the PST file to the
server.

Thanks, I will look at toodledo.

One caution .. I would *not* put the PST file into the roaming profile. It

gets corrupt far too easily.

Roaming profiles get corrupted often? I will have to look into tthat as
well.

Thanks for your response. There is a lot of good info here. Very helpful.

---------
Tom Jedrzejewicz
tomjedrz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Jeff Crosby <jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

wrote:

All,

Wednesday, for what reason we don't know, my windows roaming profile

would

not load, meaning I could not sign on with my normal profile. Windows
helpfully made a temporary profile for me. Domains and roaming profiles
are
relatively new here, so I got The Network Consultant over to help fix
things.

<<snip>>
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