Relationship of Workstation Policies to Workstations

Workstations are associated with Workstation Policies through associations with policies in any of three ways: 1) policies can be associated with the workstation object directly; 2) policies can be associated with a parent container of the workstation object; and 3) policies can be associated with a workstation group to which the workstation is a member.

The ZENworks for Desktops 4 Workstation Manager agent is activated on a workstation at user login time for Windows 98 systems, and on Windows NT/2000/XP systems, it is activated when the service is started. Once the ZENworks for Desktops 4 Workstation Manager agent is activated, it logs into the tree as the workstation and walks up the tree looking for the first Workstation Policy Package it can find that is associated with the workstation. Like all ZENworks for Desktops 4 agents, the order that the tree is searched is dependent on standard Novell Directory Services behavior and any search policies in the tree. All of the applicable workstation policies are merged and then the culmination is applied to the workstation. If any conflicts occur with the policies (such as two workstation policies affecting the same parameter), the parameter setting in the first policy is applied.

The remote control policy can be created for both the user and the workstation. In the instances when a remote control policy exists for both the user and the workstation, the remote control subsystem takes the most restrictive combination of the policies. For example, if one policy says to prompt the user for permission and the other does not the system prompts the user.