With folder redirection group policy settings, you can redirect user profile folders to a network share. When a folder is redirected, all data is stored directly on the network share during the user session.

All these settings are in the Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > VMware View Agent Configuration > Persona Management > Folder Redirection folder in the Group Policy Management Editor.

You can use these settings to redirect folders that must be highly available. Horizon Persona Management copies updates from the local user profile to the remote profile as often as once a minute, depending on the value you set for the profile upload interval. However, if a network outage or failure on the local system occurs, a user's updates since the last replication might not be saved in the remote profile. In situations where users cannot afford a temporary loss of a few minutes of recent work, you can redirect those folders that store this critical data.

The following rules and guidelines apply to folder redirection:

  • When you enable this setting for a folder, you must type the UNC path of the network share to which the folder is redirected.
  • If %username% is not part of the folder path that you configure, Horizon Persona Management appends %username% to the UNC path.
  • As a best practice, configure the folder path to include %username%, but make sure that the last subfolder in the path uses the name of the redirected folder, such as My Videos. The last folder in the path is displayed as the folder name on the user's desktop. For details, see Configuring Paths for Redirected Folders.
  • You configure a separate setting for each folder. You can select particular folders for redirection and leave others on the local Horizon desktop. You can also redirect different folders to different UNC paths.
  • If a folder redirection setting is disabled or not configured, the folder is stored on the local Horizon desktop and managed according to the Horizon Persona Management group policy settings.
  • If Horizon Persona Management and Windows roaming profiles are configured to redirect the same folder, Horizon Persona Management's folder redirection takes precedence over Windows roaming profiles.
  • Folder redirection applies only to applications that use the Windows shell APIs to redirect common folder paths. For example, if an application writes a file to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming, the file is written to the local profile and not redirected to the network location.
  • By default, Windows folder redirection gives users exclusive rights to redirected folders. To grant domain administrators access to newly redirected folders, you can use a Horizon Persona Management group policy setting.

    Windows folder redirection has a check box called Grant user exclusive rights to folder-name, which gives the specified user exclusive rights to the redirected folder. As a security measure, this check box is selected by default. When this check box is selected, administrators do not have access to the redirected folder. If an administrator attempts to force change the access rights for a user's redirected folder, Horizon Persona Management no longer works for that user.

    You can make newly redirected folders accessible to domain administrators by using the Add the administrators group to redirected folders group policy setting. This setting lets you grant the domain administrators group full control over each redirected folder. See Group Policy Settings That Control Folder Redirection.

    For existing redirected folders, see Granting Domain Administrators Access to Existing Redirected Folders.

You can specify folder paths that are excluded from folder redirection. See Group Policy Settings That Control Folder Redirection.

Caution: Horizon 7 does not support enabling folder redirection to a folder that is already in a profile managed by Horizon Persona Management. This configuration can cause failures in Horizon Persona Management and loss of user data.

For example, if the root folder in the remote profile repository is \\Server\%username%\, and you redirect folders to \\Server\%username%\Desktop, these settings would cause a failure of folder redirection in Horizon Persona Management and the loss of any contents that were previously in the \\Server\%username%\Desktop folder.

You can redirect the following folders to a network share:

  • Application Data (roaming)
  • Contacts
  • Cookies
  • Desktop
  • Downloads
  • Favorites
  • History
  • Links
  • My Documents
  • My Music
  • My Pictures
  • My Videos
  • Network Neighborhood
  • Printer Neighborhood
  • Recent Items
  • Save Games
  • Send To
  • Searches
  • Start Menu
  • Startup Items
  • Templates
  • Temporary Internet Files
Table 1. Group Policy Settings That Control Folder Redirection
Group Policy Setting Description
Add the administrators group to redirected folders Determines whether to add the administrators group to each redirected folder. Users have exclusive rights to redirected folders by default. When you enable this setting, administrators can also access redirected folders.

By default, this setting is not configured.

Files and Folders excluded from Folder Redirection The selected file and folder paths are not redirected to a network share.

In some scenarios, specific files and folders must remain in the local user profile.

To add a folder path to the Files and Folders excluded from Folder Redirection list, enable this setting, click Show, type the path name, and click OK.

Specify folder paths that are relative to the root of the user's local profile. For example: Desktop\New Folder.

Files and folders excluded from Folder Redirection (exceptions) The selected file and folder paths are exceptions to the paths that are specified in the Files and Folders excluded from Folder Redirection setting.

To add a folder path to the Files and folders excluded from Folder Redirection (exceptions) list, enable this setting, click Show, type the path name, and click OK.

Specify folder paths that reside within a folder that is specified in the Folders excluded from Folder Redirection setting and are relative to the root of the user's local profile. For example: Desktop\New Folder\Unique Folder.