How best to add an icon to every users' desktop over the network

[Ranchero]

We want to setup a new Windows 2008 SBS and looking at the options for doing the above asked question in the title differently. The issue is not all users want to have the same desktop, so therefore there are fairly high amount of unused icons on the shared desktop. Other than that continuing down the route of desktop redirection, so is there some other way of rolling out new icons? Thanks.

[.:MUNDITO:.]

You can try to redirect the Start Menu and ensure your shortcuts are there. You will then have to redirect menus based on some criteria. There might be, your computers really want to be close to identical to make this to work, in terms of operating system and software load. I dont like the desktop shortcuts, but users can be taught how to look in the start menu to find their folders. They can create their own desktop shortcuts if they need them.

[Gonzo]

You can try to do that with Group Policy preferences. Server-wise, you will have everything you need on the SBS 2008 box, and for the clients, you can deploy the client side extensions with WSUS. You can also use "Item Level Targetting" to control which users and or computers the preferences get applied to and can also set preferences to only apply once, so if you deploy a shortcut this way the user can still delete it.