Workstation Management helps you reduce the overall cost and complexity of configuring and maintaining workstation desktops in your network. Desktop Management policies provide you with automatic management of server, user, and workstation configurations, processes, and behaviors. You set up these policies using ConsoleOne®, which means that you do not need to visit each workstation in your site to configure user and workstation settings.
Using Workstation Management, you can:
Enable roaming profiles and set default desktop preferences for users
Use extensible policies (for Windows 98) and Group policies (for Windows 2000/XP) to control any application function that is configured in the Windows registry
Set parameters such as remote control and remote view for remotely managing users' workstations
Set parameters for imaging workstations
Configure users created on Windows 2000/XP workstations after they have authenticated to the directory
Set parameters to specify what inventory information to collect
Set parameters to automatically import new workstations into the tree and to remove workstations when they are no longer is use
Set user parameters for printing using the Novell iPrint client, which lets users print to any iPrint printer, regardless of the printer's physical location
Configure users' Terminal Server connections
The following sections provide basic information on Workstation Management components and features:
Workstation Management has the following components:
The workstation resident modules authenticate the user to the workstation (Windows 2000/XP only) and network, and transfer configuration information to and from the directory. Under Windows 2000/XP, Workstation Management runs with administrative privileges that allow it to dynamically create and delete user accounts, provided it can communicate with the directory.
The ConsoleOne snap-ins are Java files that are used to create, view, and configure the various Workstation Management directory objects through ConsoleOne. For more information about ConsoleOne, see the ConsoleOne Documentation Web site .
Workstation Management features let you store and configure Windows 98/2000/XP desktop policies in the directory and push them to the client. The client workstation can be thought of as an extension of the user.
Workstation Management has the following features:
Workstation Management software allows all user account and desktop information for Windows 98/2000/XP to be centrally managed within the directory using ConsoleOne as the single administrative utility.
Configuration information is stored in policy package objects. For example, there are policy package objects containing policies for Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Microsoft Terminal Servers that can be downloaded to the workstations.
For more information about Desktop Management support for the Windows NT* platform, see Interoperability with Windows NT 4 Workstations
in the Novell ZENworks 7 Desktop Management Installation Guide.
For Windows 2000/XP environments, Workstation Management also eliminates the need for domains or for a large number of user accounts to reside in the local Security Access Manager (SAM) of each workstation.
The Windows Group policy is an extension of extensible policies for Windows 2000/XP and Active Directory.
Workstation Management stores user information, desktop configuration, OS configuration, and workstation information in the directory. For 2000/XP users, this means that when a user’s directory account is associated with this configuration information, the user can access the network using any 2000/XP workstation configured with Workstation Management.
If the user does not have an account on the workstation at the time of login, Workstation Management can automatically create an account according to the associated user information. After the user is attached to the network, associated policies are downloaded to the workstation to provide a consistent desktop on each workstation used.
You can create and manage mandatory user profiles, and you can control user interface options, such as the command console and display control attributes. After you have set these attributes, users cannot modify these settings unless they are given the appropriate rights.
This feature lets you schedule actions to occur at a specific time, such as during the evening when the workstation is not in use. These actions can be done without requiring users to be logged in to the network from the workstation. As long as the workstation is powered on, Workstation Management can authenticate the workstation to the directory and perform the action.
Desktop Management uses policies for hands-off management of server and client processes. Policies can be set for automating workstation import and removal, managing users and workstations, and providing workstation inventory information.
Workstation Management lets you create extensible policies using ConsoleOne instead of the Microsoft POLEDIT utility. This approach to creating policies provides three specific benefits:
It eliminates the requirement that you copy the policy file to the sys:\public directory of each server on the network, thus reducing your initial setup workload.
Because the policy is stored in the directory, you only need to make changes once.
Any change you make to a policy is automatically replicated across the network in a multiple-partition network, thus providing automatic fault tolerance.
Desktop Management provides predefined reports for effective policies and policy package associations. The scope of both reports is for a selected container and, optionally, its subcontainers.
The Effective Policies report provides the following information:
The Package Associations report provides the following information:
The report results are displayed in Notepad and are automatically saved as text files on the workstation where you are running ConsoleOne. For further information, see Section 16.0, Generating Policy Reports.