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Group Policy Printer Preferences Question
We've just put up a Windows 2008 domain controller, and I am beginning to test group policy preference settings to assign printers to OUs. I think I have everything pretty much figured out, except how to address a scenario that occurs quite often in our organization. I have several people who work out of two different locations and would like to have the printers available that match the location where they are working. Since I can only have a user in 1 OU, I'm not sure what else I can do except assign all possible printers to these particular people. I suppose I could also establish two separate logins for these people, but that doesn't seem really user-friendly and could cause problems with email. Anyone found a creative way to deal with this type of scenario?
Adam Brown
The best way to handle it is to use Item-Level targeting on the Common tab when you are setting up the preference. You can use that to set it up so it will only apply on certain IP addresses (if each site has a different IP address) or you can target the computer object. I've done this with one of my clients that has to have a different default printer at each site and it works quite well. This technet article has more info: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733022.aspx
ASKER
I've used the item-level targeting, so I am familiar with it, but maybe I don't understand it completely. Or maybe my AD OU's are not set up to accomodate this. But if I have an OU for the first location where the user account resides and an OU for the second location, where the user account does not reside, on the second OU, even if I were to set up a printer preference (for a shared network printer), how would it be applied to this particular user? Maybe it's just the pending holidays are causing me to need a picture drawn! Thanks for sticking with me on this because it does sound like you've got it worked out, so I appreciate your knowledge-sharing.
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ASKER
Thanks a bunch for spelling that out! After reading your first paragraph, the light bulb FINALLY came on!!! Obviously, this will work and meets my needs exactly, so going to go ahead and assign points, prior to testing.
Thanks again for your help!
Thanks again for your help!
As a note, you can even get more specific with Item Level Targeting, like having it so User A will have Printer A when logged in to Computer A, but Printer B when logged in to Computer B (And only that situation, so if User B logs in to Computer A, they could still have Printer B). The trick is just knowing that any time you want more than one thing to happen based on certain criteria, you need to have both things linked to the users that need it to happen and then let the Item Level targeting system deal with the constraints. It's really freaking powerful and is one of the best improvements in 2008 :D
ASKER
Thanks for the additional information! Believe me, I was quite excited when I came across it and then discovered that even though we still have some W2003 DC's, it would still work! I agree, it has been a long time coming....that and the drive mappings with no batch scripts (yea!) have made my day(s)!!! Happy Thanksgiving!