Administering GroupWise Client Options

The GroupWise administrator snap-ins for ConsoleOne provide you with a powerful tool for controlling the way the GroupWise client works. You can find client options by selecting a domain, post office, or user, and then choosing Tools, GroupWise Utilities, Client Options.

After selecting Environment, you see the dialog box shown in Figure 12.18.

Figure 12.18. Administering GroupWise client environment options in ConsoleOne

Some of the options in this window are also available in the GroupWise client. Take note, however, of the set of padlock buttons on the right side, as well as several other options.

You can change any setting listed in this dialog box, which will effectively change the default options for users who have not changed their defaults. By clicking the adjacent padlock, you can also lock a setting in place. This will prevent users from changing individual defaults, and it will also force the setting on users who might have already changed it.

As noted in Chapter 3, "Understanding the GroupWise Directory," GroupWise administration writes changes directly to the GroupWise domain database to which it is connected. For client options to take effect, however, the changes must propagate all the way down to the GroupWise user database, USERxxx.DB. The following list examines the architecture that makes this happen:

1. The administrator makes a change to client options.

   For example, imagine that you have unchecked the box labeled Allow Shared Folder Creation and then locked that setting. In this scenario, a post office object was selected when going into Tools, GroupWise Utilities, Client Options. This means that the setting will apply to the entire post office.

2. The GroupWise administration snap-ins write the change to the GroupWise domain database and create an administration update file to propagate this change to the post office.

3. The message transfer agent (MTA) transmits this file to the POA.

4. The POA administration thread writes this change to the post office database. The POA then writes the preference changes to the preferences capsule of all USERxxx.DB files in the post office.

This section explained how GroupWise client options set from ConsoleOne get to the GroupWise message store.