What is ManagedProfile?

With current Windows environments Administrators have only two profile implementation choices: Mandatory or Roaming profiles. The problem with these choices is that Mandatory profiles are not flexible enough and Roaming profiles suffer the side effect of losing settings in situations where different applications are published from different servers - the last application to close overwrites any profile changes made by other applications. ManagedProfile provides a solution to this problem in addition to providing other profile management and enhancement functions.

What functionality does ManagedProfile provide?

All functions are made up of rules which are linked to a specific action that must be taken during the logon or logoff process. Rules are activated by filters which determine which users execute which rules.

The current release of ManagedProfile includes the following functions

● Registry Rules
Administrators define registry rules by specifying a registry key and a name. When a logout occurs the ManagedProfile agent will, for all users matching the specified filter, check the registry key for changes since the last logon event. If the key has changed it is saved. During a logon previously saved keys are loaded into the registry.

● Folder Rules
Folder rules are similar to the Registry rules but perform file and folder synchronization during logon and logoff in a similar manner to that performed for Roaming Profiles. The difference is that only those files and folders specified by an administrator for the specified filter are synchronized and not the entire user profile directory.

● Printer Configuration
Printer connections are also part of the user profile. The ManagedProfile provides a mechanism for both administrators and users to control access to printers. Administrators can control which printers a user is allowed to access by associating printers with groups

Users then select which printers they want to have as part of their profile. This is done using an application supplied with the ManagedProfile called Print GUI which has been designed to look and function in a similar manner to the existing Printer control panel applet. Using this tool users can select which printers to have as part of their profiles, which printer to set as default and can also set user specific settings for each selected printer. When a logon occurs the ManagedProfile agent sets up the user's printers and loads the user specific defaults for each printer.

● Virtual Folder Rules
This functionality is new in version 4. It allows administrators to specify virtual folders that are then loaded into the My Computer namespace for the user. This functionality allows administrators to provide access to specific network folders without having to specify shares or use network drive mappings. The folder appears in the user's My Computer namespace and is visible to all applications.

● Drive Mapping Rules
This functionality is new in version 4. It allows administrators to specify drive mappings according to specified filters.

● Application Rules
This functionality is new in version 4. It allows administrators to specify applications or commands that must be run on logon and logoff according to specified filters.

● Logging
The ManagedProfile logs user information to the database including user logon / logoff information as well as information on errors it encountered.

● Trace
The ManagedProfile is equipped with comprehensive Trace functionality for tracking configuration and other system errors.
 

ManagedProfile Architecture

ManagedProfile stores all configuration information in a database and all profile specific information in a user specific storage location. Profile data is saved in one of two locations: the users home directory or a specified managedprofile storage location.

The primary design decisions behind the product have been

● simplicity,
● reliability,
● ease of use and installation and
● extensibility,

and it has the following components:

The ManagedProfile Agent
The ManagedProfile agent is a compact 70K file with no dependencies other than a Windows operating system. All communication with the database is done through standard HTTP servers. The agent is installed by copying the single executable to the required servers / workstations and configuring the logon / logoff scripts.

The ManagedProfile Configuration Agent (version 4 and up)
The MPCA is designed to run as a script within a software distribution system. Its function is to configure virtual folder information on servers. Virtual folders have two components: definition and reference. Either can be setup in both Machine and User registries but the recommended solution is for the definition to be setup in the Machine registry and the reference to be configured in the User registry.

The MPCA is run on each server / workstation that will run the ManagedProfile agent. The MPCA reads virtual folder information from the database and sets up the corresponding definitions on each server it runs on. (It also removes definitions of virtual folders no longer in use). If the virtual folder definitions are not created on the server / workstation with the MPCA the ManagedProfile agent will create them during the logon. However, this is not recommended because it means that the definitions have to be created every time a user logs on adding, unnecessarily, to the time taken to complete the logon process

The ManagedProfile PrintGUI
An interface that allows users to

● Specify which printers to include in their profiles
● Specify a default printer
● Specify user default settings for each printer.

The ManagedProfile Administration Console
The administration console provides the administrator with the interface to configure and maintain the ManagedProfile settings. It is a standard Web based interface that can be setup simply by copying the console script files to a directory in the WWWRoot directory, or any virtual server directory, and configuring a system DSN.

ManagedProfile System Requirements

ManagedProfile does not require specific hardware or software to run other than that required to run the operating system. The only small exception to this rule is with respect to the database and HTTP servers.

Database
The current version requires MSDE or MS SQL Server 6.5 (or greater) to store data.

HTTP Servers
The current version requires MS IIS version 4 or greater.  

Demonstration Versions

Latest copies of product demonstration versions can be downloaded from our download page.