If you install Horizon Persona Management on standalone (non-Horizon) laptops, make sure that the user profiles are kept synchronized when users take their standalone laptops offline.

To ensure that a standalone laptop user has an up-to-date local profile, you can configure the Horizon Persona Management group policy setting, Enable background download for laptops. This setting downloads the entire user profile to the standalone laptop in the background.

As a best practice, notify your users to make sure that their user profiles are completely downloaded before they disconnect from the network. Tell users to wait for the Background download complete notice to appear on their laptop screens before they disconnect.

To allow the Background download complete notice to be displayed on user laptops, configure the Horizon Persona Management group policy setting, Show critical errors to users via tray icon alerts.

If a user disconnects from the network before the profile download is complete, the local profile and remote profile might become unsynchronized. While the user is offline, the user might update a local file that was not fully downloaded. When the user reconnects to the network, the local profile is uploaded, overwriting the remote profile. Data that was in the original remote profile might be lost.

The following steps provide an example you might follow.

Prerequisites

Verify that Horizon Persona Management is configured for your users' standalone laptops. See Configuring a Horizon Persona Management Deployment.

Procedure

  1. In the Active Directory OU that controls your standalone laptops, enable the Enable background download for laptops setting.
    In the Group Policy Object Editor, expand the following folders: Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates (ADMX), VMware View Agent Configuration, Persona Management, Roaming & Synchronization.
  2. For standalone laptops, you must use a non-Horizon method to notify users when they log in.
    For example, you might distribute this message: Your personal data is dynamically downloaded to your laptop after you log in. Make sure your personal data has finished downloading before you disconnect your laptop from the network. A "Background download complete" notice pops up when your personal data finishes downloading.