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Automated deployment of RDP and VPN links, Server 2008

My current network is a mix of XP and Windows 7 machines with a Server 2008 primary domain controller. As it stands now, when we have new laptops come in we need to manually add in two RDP links and a VPN link. Desktops do not get these links.

I'm looking for a way to automate both of these steps. On the RDP links the user will log in with their existing windows username and password. On the VPN (L2TP with a pre-shared key) the user has a seperate password, but still uses the windows username.

In my ideal world both of these items (RDP & VPN) can be set up through group policy on our laptop machines with minimal input from me. If I have to go in and set the password on each VPN connection that's fine, but if there was somewhere in group policy or the user profile I could input their VPN password ahead of time and that information gets rolled into the VPN link that gets created, that would be fantastic.

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RDP

This is the closest I've come to a link about automating the RDP shortcut creation and it's really just link on creating an .rdp file from a RemoteApp program which I'm pretty sure I don't want:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc730673(WS.10).aspx#BKMK_CreateRDP

There's also this EE thread that I couldn't make heads nor tails of:
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/26618319/Deploy-rdp-file-through-GPO.html

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VPN

In the following link the author specifically states an L2TP VPN connection can be automated with a pre-shared key through the MS CMAK tool, but he doesn't get into specifics about how to set this up:
http://cjwdev.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/automate-creation-of-an-l2tp-vpn-with-pre-shared-key-and-automatically-use-windows-credentials/

Here's a technet article about how to deploy VPN connections, but 1) I don't see a section where I can specify a pre-shared key and 2) I'm not sure if this can be a script because a lot of our laptop users aren't always connected to the network and certainly don't start up connected to the network.

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This is seemingly a huge undertaking compounded by the fact I only know enough on server 2008 to make me dangerous and until this point, usually worked on general networking and Cisco issues.

Any help and/or input is appreciated.
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Got info from another site.