Profile Management

Configuration precedence

You can configure Profile Management using Group Policies and the .ini file. Configuration settings are applied as follows:

  1. Settings defined by Group Policies take precedence. The .ini file is queried only if a policy setting is set to Not Configured.

    Note: If you apply a Group Policy Object selectively to sites and domains within an Organizational Unit, a further precedence applies. See Group Policy: Filtering and Permission. Domain and OU Group Policies take precedence over local policies.

  2. Where a setting is not defined by a policy, Profile Management tries to read the setting from the .ini file.

  3. If a setting is not configured by a group policy or in the .ini file, the default setting is used.

There might be situations where you want to configure the same setting differently in Group Policy and the .ini file. For example when you want to activate default logging with a Group Policy setting but activate verbose logging using the .ini file on a computer that you use for troubleshooting.

About the Profile Management .ini file

Default configuration

Profile Management comes with a default configuration stored in an .ini file. This file must be in the installation folder so that the Profile Management Service can recognize it. The default configuration is suitable for most environments. It processes the profiles of all users in all groups.

If you have a non-English deployment of Profile Management running on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you must create an appropriate language version of the .ini file using UPMPolicyDefaults_all.ini. Rename a copy of this file to reflect your language (for example, UPMPolicyDefaults_all_es.ini for Spanish) and localize the folder names. Use these file names:

  • For French operating systems, UPMPolicyDefaults_all_fr.ini
  • For German operating systems, UPMPolicyDefaults_all_de.ini
  • For Spanish operating systems, UPMPolicyDefaults_all_es.ini
  • For Japanese operating systems, UPMPolicyDefaults_all_ja.ini
  • For Simplified Chinese operating systems, UPMPolicyDefaults_all_zh-CN.ini

Modify the .ini file

If you add entries to the .ini file, ensure that the variables and values have the correct format.

Flags (on/off indicators) must be of this form:

<variable>=<value>
<!--NeedCopy-->

A value of 1 enables a setting and any other value or no value disables it. For example, the following entry enables the ServiceActive setting:

ServiceActive=1
<!--NeedCopy-->

Any of the following entries disable the setting:

ServiceActive=ON
ServiceActive=OFF
ServiceActive=TRUE
ServiceActive=FALSE
ServiceActive=
<!--NeedCopy-->

List entries must be of this form:

<value>=
<!--NeedCopy-->

The following entry specifies Microsoft Office files to be synchronized:

[SyncFileList]
AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\*.OfficeUI
<!--NeedCopy-->

Changes to Group Policy settings take effect when a manual or automatic policy refresh occurs on the target computers. Changes to the .ini file take effect when you issue the command gpupdate /force, which is recommended. Or the changes take effect when you restart the Profile Management Service on the target computers.

Configuration precedence