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Matthias Güntert
Asked: 2014-08-08 05:09:16 +0800 CST

Replacing folder redirection with work folders

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I am currently building a lab to get familiar with Microsoft's new "Work Folder" feature. I am looking for a way to abandon folder redirection and offline files.

So far I have one Windows 7 client connected to my servers sync-share (had to install an additional package). This work folder show's up under Desktop => User => Work Folders, beneath Documents, etc. So far so good.

Now I am wondering how one would move all the user folders (Documents, Downloads, Favorites, ...) to this Work Folder. Is there any best-pracice or real life experience out there?

I am kind a confused here... can someone shed some light on this? Thanks in advance

[Addendum]

What worked pretty well in my lab environment is applying a GPO that redirects Documents, Downloads, ... to C:\Users\%username%\Work Folders\Documents. I even got a boost in performance as IOPS occur local only and do not have to travel over the network.

I do not think that there is a way around folder redirection in this situation.

windows

2 Answers

  1. We are implementing Work Folders at the Moment and I can confirm that GPO Redirect of Folders is the way to go. If you used to work with DFS, i.e. Folder Redirection and Offline files so far, you can use the established server share as a sync share and the transition will be seamless. You may add to that at any time by moving any folder via redirection into the workfolders area and it will add to the share.

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  2. I know this is an old thread, but I just started playing with work folders, and just want to throw out one note - you never want to use the %username% variable for referencing user profiles. When I initially set up my laptop, I created a new local user that was the same username as my domain user, so when I joined it to my domain, the profile folder for my user was 'user.DOMAIN', so when I initially set up the GPO to redirect to the 'work folders' using '%systemdrive%\users%username%\Work Folders\Documents' as found here, it obviously didn't work well. I ended up using "%userprofile%\Work Folders\Desktop" (with the quotes - without the quotes, it changed 'Redirect to the following location' to 'Redirect to the local userprofile location'). Once I did this, it worked perfectly and put everything in the proper location. Technically, using %username% should work in most cases, but there are circumstances where that'll cause issues.

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