Configurable Screen Saver Managed by Active Directory
- From: Culvero <Culvero@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:44:00 -0800
Hi Everyone, Please bear with me as I am new to my position and to Microsoft
Technet. I have read all of the postings and responses that the terms "screen
saver" could find. I'm also sorry if this is too long and not sufficiently
techie.
Business Requirements:
The business wishes to utilize the screen real estate dynamically to deliver
screen saver media in support of varying initiatives to gain mind share in
support of that activitity. This could entail a single screen saver image our
to the entire company or could entail splitting the organization into
separate groups that would then receive their individualized (by group)
screen saver.
An example of the first would be the release of a new corporate-wide slogan
or objective. An example of the second would be to provide a screen saver to
the Outbound Sales Group the cheers them on during a quarterly sales
promotion while our inbound sales group is being prepared with images of new
product offerings we have added (while the rest of the company is getting a
standard company screen saver).
Current State:
My firm uses Active Directory - Windows 2003 Server flavor. The majority of
desktops are Windows XP. We have an existing group policy to set the screen
saver to enable after 15 minutes of inactivity and a login is required by the
user to regain access. I have also read that a specific *.scr file can also
be specified in Active Directory.
Options?:
1. On solution that occurs to me would be to copy out the screen saver to
identified groups and ensure the correct screen file name is set in for that
groups Active Directory settings. That would require the management and
coordination of two groups for every change in screens. Those that distribute
and maintain software images and those that manage Active Directory.
Additionally, the groups that each maintains need to remain synched up or
there will issues.
2. I did some research last night and found several sources for screen
savers that can be referenced within the Windows settings that can retrieve
the images (media data) that are then replayed in the screen saver. The file
formats that I saw were supported are: RSS, HTML, Power Point and Flash.
These could be retreived by the screen saver from (a) central server(s). Thus
the screen saver image/media data could be updated for all users from a
centeral location without redistributing another screen saver or image file
to each PC.
What I could not find with this approach is a level of granularity in
dynamically distributing screen savers to different subsections of the
company by group.
Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. One question I have, is
it possible to control the Screen Saver Settings (Display Properties-Screen
Saver-Settings) centrally? Maybe through a setting in AD that I have not been
able to locate? If this was the case, then I should be able to implement
scenario #2 and control my Screen Saver output based on my AD Organizational
Unit Group Settings, correct? Given that it is in anyway possible.
.
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