Deciding what to customize

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Deciding what to customize

You use the Connection Manager Administration Kit (CMAK) wizard to do most of the customization for a service profile. Before running the CMAK wizard, you need to decide what to customize and then provide the information and files needed to run the wizard and implement your decisions. To help prepare for creating a service profile, you can complete the planning worksheet that is available in the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. For more information about Connection Manager, see "Deploying Remote Access Clients Using Connection Manager" at the Microsoft Windows Resource Kits Web site.

Although you can run the wizard and build your service profile without providing any custom information except for the name of your service and a file naming convention to be used for your service profile files, you can customize many other things to meet the needs of your service. For example, you can:

  • Reconfigure user routing tables with your service profile in order to better manage your network traffic and security.

  • Reconfigure user proxy settings to ensure that the user has appropriate access to internal and external resources while connected to your service.

  • Merge previously created service profiles into the one you are building, in order to incorporate phone books and other features from those service profiles.

  • Provide a customer-support phone number or other customer-support information in the Connection Manager logon dialog box.

  • Provide a realm name (prefix or suffix) that is appended to the user name (to specify network routing and authentication information needed by your Internet service provider, without requiring your users to understand and incorporate the information themselves).

  • Specify dial-up entries to be associated with phone numbers in the phone book you provide to your users.

  • Support virtual private network (VPN) connections over the Internet.

  • Incorporate custom actions that run at specific points during the connection process.

  • Incorporate your own graphics in place of the default graphics provided in Connection Manager logon and phone book dialog boxes.

  • Provide a phone book and phone-book update capabilities to your users.

  • Incorporate your own custom icons in place of the default Connection Manager icons.

  • Customize the menu associated with the notification area shortcut when your users are connected.

  • Customize the default Help file provided with Connection Manager.

  • Include Connection Manager 1.3 in your service profile.

  • Incorporate an end-user license agreement (EULA) in your service profile that users must accept in order to install your service profile.

  • Include additional support files in your service profile, such as user documentation files and custom programs and files needed to support custom actions that you have defined.

  • Enhance security by enabling server callback to users.

You should consider each of these decisions for each service profile you create. Depending on the target audience and other factors, your decisions will vary for each service profile. Before you implement your decisions, you should also consider the effects of your implementation and any potential integration issues. For information on planning for integration, distribution, installation, and other implementation considerations, see Planning for effective implementation. This section provides the information you need to support effective and efficient planning and development efforts.

Note

  • You must build profiles on a server operating system that is designed for the same processor set as the client computers on which users will install the profile. For example, if you want to build a profile for users running Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, you must build that profile on a server that is running an x64-based version of Windows Server 2003.