Synchronization policy settings
The Synchronization section contains policy settings for specifying which files and folders in a users profile are synchronized between the system on which the profile is installed and the user store.
Directories to synchronize
This setting specifies any directories you want Profile management to include in the synchronization process that are located in excluded folders. By default, Profile management synchronizes everything in the user profile. It is not necessary to include subfolders of the user profile by adding them to this list. For more information, see Include and exclude items.
Paths on this list must be relative to the user profile.
Example: Desktop\exclude\include ensures that the subfolder called include is synchronized even if the folder called Desktop\exclude is not
By default, this setting is disabled and no folders are specified.
If this setting is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used.
If this setting is not configured here or in the .ini file, only non-excluded folders in the user profile are synchronized.
Files to synchronize
This setting specifies any files you want Profile management to include in the synchronization process that are located in excluded folders. By default, Profile management synchronizes everything in the user profile. It is not necessary to include files in the user profile by adding them to this list. For more information, see Include and exclude items.
Paths on this list must be relative to the user profile. Relative paths are interpreted as being relative to the user profile. Wildcards can be used but are allowed only for file names. Wildcards cannot be nested and are applied recursively.
Examples:
- AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\Access.qat specifies a file below a folder that is excluded in the default configuration
- AppData\Local\MyApp*.cfg specifies all files with the extension .cfg in the profile folder AppData\Local\MyApp and its subfolders
By default, this setting is disabled and no files are specified.
If this setting is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used.
If this setting is not configured here or in the .ini file, only non-excluded files in the user profile are synchronized.
Folders to mirror
This setting specifies which folders relative to a user’s profile root folder to mirror. Configuring this policy setting can help solve issues involving any transactional folder (also known as a referential folder), that is a folder containing interdependent files, where one file references others.
Mirroring folders allows Profile management to process a transactional folder and its contents as a single entity, avoiding profile bloat. Be aware that, in these situations the “last write wins” so files in mirrored folders that have been modified in more than one session will be overwritten by the last update, resulting in loss of profile changes.
For example, you can mirror the Internet Explorer cookies folder so that Index.dat is synchronized with the cookies that it indexes.
If a user has two Internet Explorer sessions, each on a different server, and they visit different sites in each session, cookies from each site are added to the appropriate server. When the user logs off from the first session (or in the middle of a session, if the active write back feature is configured), the cookies from the second session should replace those from the first session. However, instead they are merged, and the references to the cookies in Index.dat become out of date. Further browsing in new sessions results in repeated merging and a bloated cookie folder.
Mirroring the cookie folder solves the issue by overwriting the cookies with those from the last session each time the user logs off so Index.dat stays up to date.
By default, this setting is disabled and no folders are mirrored.
If this setting is not configured here, the value from the .ini file is used.
If this policy is not configured here or in the .ini file, no folders are mirrored.