Shortcuts with Group Policy

Could you be a bit more specific? Are you wanting to create a desktop that all users can see and nobody can change? Are you only wanting certain shortcuts to appear on certain computers that fall into the scope of a certain policy?

I want to create specific shortcuts on the User's Windows Desktop.  They will only be applied to users in a specific OU.

I have several labs where I don't want anything on the desktop changed but I want a certain desktop to appear on all the machines in that lab. To do this, I create a share on the server and drop all my icons there. I then use a GPO with desktop redirection and point it to this folder. This prevents them from changing anything assuming the permissions on the share don't allow it. If this is an option, I can go into more detail on how to accomplish this.

If that isn't an option, you may want to look into using a batch file or script to copy the needed shortcuts to the desktop at logon. This will put the shortcuts there but they still have the ability to add/change/delete anything.

If I went with desktop redirection is there a merge option?

Unfortunately there is not a merge option for redirection. It's all or none. If you use a script to copy the shortcuts, you may or may not have to deal with duplicate icons if it runs every time they log on. I'd have to experiment with it to see if it saw the shortcuts were created and ignored it, or if it created shortcut (1), shortcut (2) etc.

Would working with a script be a one time thing?  Just set it to copy shortcuts to the User's Desktop?

Only windows 7.  Thanks I will give that a shot.