Outlook with roaming profile on different computers

mcostan

Call me geek :) As I said I don’t expect many people to need this working.

Vogi

@Sebastian You might be right… maybe it’s just the way, MS want’s it to be… roaming profiles only in combination with an Exchange server.

Combining the ID with the IP would be sufficient for our PCs, a sthey have static IPs
Would this be a global feature or something combined e.g. with the “user agent”?
If it’s global, what would happen with real mobile devices that change their IPs?

It could be so simple, if the Decice ID would be device depending…

Thanks you
Vogi

Sebastian

Yeah, I thought about doing this for Outlook only (identified at the device type) and if enabled via a config flag.
Then still, if you run Outlook on a notebook and your IP changes (because e.g. you are on the road) it will resync your profile on the notebook. It’s also not really what you want. Perhaps this is something we can do via KOE.

Vogi

It sound’s really good - it would solve all my problem.
And if its only a fix for Outllok - it shouldn’ break anything.

If KOE coudl replace the Device ID with a unique one, this would solve the problem for Outlook “on the road”…
But your solution could be used for the Windows Mail App (device = WindowsMail), as well.

I would be really glad, if you could do that.

Greetings
Vogi

Sebastian

The problem replacing the ID is that the registry keys are probably then transferred to the next machine on logon and you get the same problem again (.ost file not matching the states on the server).
The keys are in HKCU and afaik this is saved into the NTUSER.DAT saved in the roaming profile. So next time you switch the computer the changed keys are there.

I think we could make a “flag/button” in the KOE preferences, saying “ Sync as roaming profile”. This triggers a DeviceID modification adding an identifier for Z-Push to include e.g. the IP locally.

I will have a chat with the KOE dev to see if we can find a good solution here.

Do you install KOE manually? Because when deploying via GPO there could perhaps be a flag that marks the profile as roaming on creation.

mcostan

I may be proposing something irrelevant here, but how about getting hold somehow of the hostname of the PC as opposed (or in addition) to the IP address?

KOE could perhaps adjust the ID according to the hostname (and the username) when it starts?

(please feel free to say that I am going down the completely wrong track).

fbartels

@mcostan I don’t think this could help in a situation with roaming profiles, where you indeed have changing hostnames and probably even changeing ips, when logging in from a different workstation.

Sebastian

@mcostan While in theory this is a good idea, the problem is, that this change will be saved in the roaming profile and cause the same issue on the next machine (the id saved in the registry does match server states, but there is no OST file on the system causing a full resync).

That said, I don’t see an KOE only solution here, KOE & Z-Push have to do a joint effort identifying the client within the roaming profile. Z-Push has only access to information sent in the headers by Outlook (KOE can’t interfere here), namely remote-ip and user-agent. The user-agent doesn’t help, I expect that to be the same on all machines. Besides that, it can easily change e.g. with an Office update.

mcostan

I see, makese sense, thanks.

Vogi

@Sebastian Sorry for not answering… just didn’t realize, that you asked for the way of installing KOE. Yes, it is done manually and it wouldn’t be a problem to do some setting here.
It wouldnt even matter if the setting hast to be done with the PluginDebugger.exe - I changed the loaction of the folder to the roaming profile path… so it is something thaqt has to be done once, too.

Sebastian

There is an option to change the OST path. It should be possible to put the OST on a network drive that needs to be available on all roaming machines.

@Vogi Would you try this procedure? I think it’s best to set via the ForceOSTPath registry parameter as described on the second half of this page: https://www.slipstick.com/exchange/moving-outlook-ost-file/

Could you give me feedback if this works for you?

Cheers,
Sebastian