And that definitely reduces productivity. However, I’ve often encountered desktops that are so cluttered with icons that it’s quite difficult for the user to locate the one icon that they’re looking for. Of course, having the icons appear on the desktop can make launching applications a snap.
Find out how to organize your desktop icons into logical groups.ĭuring my years of supporting Windows users, I’ve noticed that even though the Start menu provides an excellent place to keep application shortcuts, many people prefer to store the application shortcuts as icons on the desktop-this is true even in Windows XP, with its new and improved Start menu. Keeping icons on the Windows desktop can be more convenient than using the Start menu, but an overabundance of icons can reduce efficiency. Now jump back on your client computer, open a command prompt (better yet, PowerShell)Īt the prompt, type gpupdate and press Enter.Īfter a few seconds, your shortcut should disappear.Organize Windows desktop with virtual program groups If you read the next window that pops up, it’s telling us we are only deleting the link, not the GPO, which is a good thing. In Group Policy Management, right click the policy and select Delete. It will still be available for future use if we want to link it to another OU. Jump over to your client machine and open a command prompt (better yet, PowerShell).Īfter a few seconds, you should now see your new shortcut on your desktop.Īs long as you followed the steps above and selected to Remove this item when it is no longer applied in the policy properties, the following will work.įor this tutorial and testing purposes, we will Delete the policy from the OU, but will not delete the enitre policy. Here I will write All users shortcut pointing to web address. Over time when you start to have a lot of polices, this can save you a lot of time from having to remember or figure out when and why you set the policy. In the Description field, I find it best practice to write a short not about the policy. What this will do is remove the icon if we delete this policy, or if the user falls out of the OU structure that has this policy applied to it. Select Remove this item when it is no longer applied and select OK to the prompt about changing the Action field to ‘Replace’.
Now right-click on the newly created and linked policy and select Edit. I am giving this policy the name: Shortcut –.
Give the policy a descriptive name so it’s easy to determine exactly what this policy is for. Right-click NOTCREATIVE OU and select Create a GPO in this domain, and Link it here. Open up Group Policy Management on your Windows Server 2012 box.Įxpand the tree and right-click on the OU you want this policy to be applied to.įor this example, I want all of the users in the environment to have this shortcut. All computers (and servers) will be getting this new desktop icon shortcut. The screenshot below is what we will be accomplishing in this tutorial. Want a shortcut to placed on all desktops in the environmentĭeploying Desktop Shortcuts to All User’s Computers.
Both are 64 bit (not needed, but thought I would mention it).How to deploy desktop shortcuts using Windows Server 2012.Ī very common task in any domain environment is to deploy desktop shortcuts (icons) to either all of your user’s computers or to a certain group of user’s computers depending on what group(s) the user is a member of.įor this tutorial, our environment consists of the following: