Roaming profiles without a server?

[AHarvey]

Hi,

Our call centres are going from laptops to desktops, they move around a lot at the moment.

the old IT guy swears it is possible to have roaming profiles without a server running.

Everything I find online shows you need either a windows server or a linux/samba server.

Is he right and if so, how would you do it?

 

[Glanza]

Don't think it's possible, only way I can think of doing it would be messy as you'd have to be copying profiles around the network at intervals to keep them all uptodate.

 

[Armageus]

What is the real need for Roaming Profiles?

Better to just have personal files on a network share (i.e. via Folder Redirection), and have users sync what they need if taking a laptop off site.

 

[glenimp617]

Roaming Profiles is no longer used these days. MS recommend you use UEV instead which is a million times better. We moved to it a year or so ago now.
You still need a file share somewhere though.

 

[AHarvey]

What is the real need for Roaming Profiles?

Better to just have personal files on a network share (i.e. via Folder Redirection), and have users sync what they need if taking a laptop off site.

They don't take them offsite, just switch places within the same room, sometimes it's once a week, others it is every few weeks. I just don't want to be creating and copying profiles all the time and would prefer a solution from the start to make things easy.

Roaming Profiles is no longer used these days. MS recommend you use UEV instead which is a million times better. We moved to it a year or so ago now.
You still need a file share somewhere though.

Something else to go and learn File share we could probably get away with using one of the computers in there as they only use:

Thunderbird + their emails/profile (not a lot of emails either)
Xlite - Voip software everyone has same settings/account
Chrome with 4 bookmarks
LibreOffice

Plus, it'd be nice to be able to set wallpapers, remove games etc but not sure if that is possible yet.

 

[glenimp617]

You can learn UEV in about an hour, there's really nothing to it. It helps if you are on Windows 10 1607, else you have to deploy and install the UEV agent. Other than that, just set the location in a group policy, copy the templates to a share and job done.

 

[AHarvey]

First of the new PC's up and running, Win 10 Pro version 1607.

They won't give me access to Azure folder, so next step is looking at OneDrive, see if it can be setup that way and test it out.

If not, it'll be 2 sites with local storage.

 

[nightmare99]

What do you mean by Azure folder? Also are you talking about OneDrive for business or a SharePoint team site?