Support Customization Through User Profiles
Many applications can be customized at installation time to include or exclude specific features or components. This approach does not work in the Terminal Services environment, because users typically access a common set of program files and libraries. Therefore, if the administrator excludes a component during the initial setup of the application under the Terminal Services, all users will be prevented from accessing that component.
A better way of addressing customization—in both Terminal Services and in the traditional Windows client/server environment—is to enable feature selection through user profiles. To adopt this approach, determine feature selection or de-selection at run time based on settings in the current user's registry hives. In Windows 2000 Server, you can use the Group Policy MMC snap-in to configure which features are available for which users. Windows NT Server makes use of the Systems Policy Editor tool to specify settings for the user desktop.
In addition, the administrator in a Terminal Services environment must be able to override end-user selections by setting policies using the Group Policy MMC snap-in. or by setting System Policies in the Windows NT Server operating system. For example, CPU-intensive processes such as a background spelling checker, which might be fine to run in the background on a desktop PC, should be disabled automatically by the application in a Terminal Services environment so they do not degrade performance for other users. Application options should be designed to check Group Policies (or System Policies in Windows NT Server) first and default to those policies. This process should be transparent to the end user, who should not have to care if the application is running locally on the desktop or centrally from Terminal Services.
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