HOWTO: Force application icons and location on the users desktop

This week a good member of the RES Software community called us at support with a great question. He would like to have a predefined desktop for all his users everytime they logon to their environment.
Not only the application icons need to be placed on the desktop but also the location of the icons need to be fixed.

Locations where you maybe want to have a predefined desktop are Internet Kiosks, Library Environments, Public used PC environments etc. etc.

The steps you need to take to create a predefined desktop:

• logon with a TEST user
• place the application icons on the desktop via PowerPanel

• move the application icons to the correct location on the desktop

• log off from the desktop
• grab the desktop.pos from the \pwrmenu folder on the users HomeFolder
• grab the desktop= line from the \pwrmenu\pwruser.ini on the users HomeFolder

The Desktop.pos file contains all the screen location information for the application icons. The Desktop= line in the pwruser.ini file contains all the application ID’s for the applications that need to be placed on the desktop.

Open the RES PowerFuse Management console to add the desktop.pos and applications ID’s to HomeDirectory Maintenance.

• open the Node Configuration Management ->PowerLaunch -> Directory Maintenance -> Home Directory -> Maintenance
• add the Desktop.pos to Maintenance

• open the Node Configuration Management ->PowerLaunch -> Directory Maintenance -> Home Directory -> Settings
• add a new Object to settings via the Add button
• configure this object to place the desktop.pos in the users \pwrmenu Home Folder

• set the Action on “Always copy” so that the correct version is always placed in the users Home folder during logon
• create a second object to modify the pwruser.ini

When both objects are created the structure in the Manangement console should look like this

When a users logs on to the RES PowerFuse environment everytime the same predefined desktop will appear.
NOTE: this will only work in the Windows shell with RES PowerFuse.