Profile Management

Enable asynchronous processing for user Group Policy on logon

Windows provides two processing modes for user Group Policy: synchronous and asynchronous. Windows uses a registry value to determine the processing mode for the next user logon. If the registry value doesn’t exist, synchronous mode is applied.

The registry value is a machine-level setting and doesn’t roam with users. Thus, asynchronous mode is not applied as expected if users:

  • Log on to different machines.
  • Log on to the same machine where the Delete locally cached profiles on logoff policy is enabled.

Citrix Profile Management provides the Enable asynchronous processing for user Group Policy on logon policy to resolve this issue. With this policy enabled, Profile Management roams the registry value with users. As a result, the actual processing mode is applied each time users log on.

This feature applies to both Windows and Windows Server OSs.

Prerequisites

For asynchronous mode to take effect on Windows machines, you don’t need to take any additional actions. However, for this mode to take effect on Windows Server machines, make sure that they meet the following requirements:

  • Have the Remote Desktop Session Host role installed.

  • Have the Group Policies set as follows:

    • Computer Config > Admin Templates > System > Logon > Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon: Disabled
    • Computer Config > Admin Templates > System > Group Policy > Allow asynchronous user Group Policy processing when logging on through Remote Desktop Services: Enabled

Enable the policy

Follow these steps to enable the policy:

  1. Open the Group Policy Management Editor, and then access Policies > Administrative Templates: Policy definitions (ADMX files) > Citrix Components > Profile Management.
  2. Under Profile Management, click Advanced settings.
  3. Double-click the Enable asynchronous processing for user Group Policy on logon policy.
  4. Select Enabled.
  5. Click OK.

For your changes to take effect, run the gpupdate /force command from the command prompt. Log off from all sessions and then log on again. For details, see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/gpupdate.

Configuration precedence:

  1. If this setting isn’t configured here, the corresponding setting from the .ini file is used.

  2. If this setting is neither configured here nor in the .ini file, the policy is disabled.

Enable asynchronous processing for user Group Policy on logon