Setting up a desktop policy for the organization

Desktop policy overview

In this example, we want to set up desktop policies for our organization. Our requirements for our desktop policies are the following:

• We have two offices, an East Coast office and a West Coast office.
• Each office has its own Welcome page and database bookmarks that users wish to have on their respective Notes clients.

To support this we need the following documents:

• Two organizational Policy documents: one for East region and one for West region
• Two desktop policy Settings documents for East and West, with settings for Welcome page and local databases

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Create the desktop policy Settings documents

First we will create our two desktop policy Settings documents, and then we'll create the Policy documents that use them.

1. Create a desktop policy Settings document (see Creating policy Settings documents for details).
2. Fill in the Name and Description.
   
   
   
   
3. Enter the server name EastServer01/KennethAdams.com in the Catalog/Domain Search server and Domino Directory server fields.
4. Scroll down to the Homepage/Welcome Page Options section.
5. Copy a database link from the Welcome Pages database that you intend to use and paste that link into the Corporate Welcome Pages database field. You can then set the other Home/Welcome page settings.
6. Scroll back up to the top of the page and click on the Databases tab.
   
   
   
   
7. Copy the bookmarks to databases you wish to add to user's Notes client in the Bookmarks to merge with users' bookmarks section. These bookmarks will be merged with the user's existing bookmarks. To set up the bookmarks to be merged, complete the following:
   1. First create the bookmarks in your own Notes client. You can organize the bookmarks into folders.
   2. Drag and drop the bookmarks and bookmark folders into the gray box in the Bookmarks to merge with users' bookmarks section.
8. Click the Save & Close button.

Repeat these steps for the West office so that there are two desktop policy Settings documents.

There are too many options in desktop policy Settings documents to be able to cover them all in this tutorial. For complete details, see Tutorial resources. The next panel contains an overview of the settings available under each tab.

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Options in desktop policy Settings documents

Here is an overview of the setting available under each tab in desktop policy Settings documents.

Basics

• Name and Description
• Server Options including create local mail replica and smart upgrade options
• Mail Template Info for converting from previous mail template versions
• Homepage/Welcome Page options for deploying custom welcome pages
• Internet browser options

Databases

• Create new local replicas
• Create local replicas of mobile directory catalogs
• Push bookmarks to users

Dial-up Connections

• Default dial-up connections and passthru server
• Accounts
• Internet server accounts (LDAP, SMTP, POP servers, etc.)

Name Servers

• Secondary Domino name servers for finding network addresses of servers
• Applet Security
• Security for Java applets

Proxies

• Settings for Internet proxy servers (HTTP, FTP, SOCKS, etc.)

Mail

• Choose the format to use for mail sent to Internet addresses

Preferences

• Extensive list of settings similar to what's available under User Preferences in Notes clients. Includes sub-tabs for: Basics, Misc, International, Internet, Mail and News, Replication and Network Ports

Comments

• A rich text field for comments

Diagnostics

• Options for diagnostic report collection

Administration

• Administrators of policy Settings document

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Create the desktop Policy document

Now we will create our Policy document that will enforce our desktop policy Settings documents. We will use organizational Policy documents because we want our desktop policy to be enforced across the organization units for East and West.

1. Create a Policy document (see Creating Policy documents for details)
2. Fill in the Policy Name using the format */organization unit/organization name (for example, */East/KennethAdams.com)
   
   
   
   
3. Select the Policy Type as Organizational
4. Fill in the Description
5. Under the Settings Type section, in the Desktop field, select the Policy Settings document already created
6. Click the Save & Close button

The next section takes a look at mail archiving policy options.

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• Overview of policies
• Working with Policy documents
• Assigning an explicit policy
• Policy hierarchy and inheritance
• Roaming User feature
• Real-world scenario
• Setting up a security policy for the organization
• Setting up a desktop policy for the organization
• Mail archiving policy
• Tutorial summary
• Resources
• About the author

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