Applying Policies

[Wolfy]

Hi

Think this is a bit of a bug/wishlist query, so hope it's in the right section

We are in the process of evaluating version 3.6. One of the features we really like is the ability to apply policies to restrict what a user can do, in particular restrict internet access.

We have setup a policy to deny access to the internet, and on the first few tests (we have a testbed computer in the office)this seems to work. Then it stops working and will not deny access to the internet. We know the policy is being applied as we have included a restriction on notepad.exe in the same policy and this seems to work fine, as in access to notepad.exe is restricted when the policy is applied.

Are there any issues with this feature or is it something we are doing wrong?

Secondly, if a policy is applied, and the user logs off and another user logs on, the policy settings are removed. If you want to "lock off" either the internet or certain programs for a lesson, would it not be better if the policy was applied to the selected computers, regardless of who logs on/off until the policy is removed by the teacher? Or is this what is supposed to happen and we haven't set it up right?

Hope this makes sense

Look forward to hearing from you

David

[Andy]

This has now been fixed in version 3.7

Please let me know if you find any more problems.

Andy

[ddeffner]

I too have had issues with the policies not being applied to clients. I am running 3.9 and policy application is real sporadic. Rarely it does work, most of the time it doesn't. Everything else works just fine. I can watch, lock, unlock, restart, shutdown and all those good things. The policies just aren't working. I have only one and it's to block iexplore.exe and outlook.exe. My machines are Windows XP SP2. In the firewall policy I have allowed ABControl to open any port(s) it wants and the tutor opens 5151. Any ideas what I may be doing wrong here would be appreciated.

Thanks
Dan

[drk2cmp]

[quote=ddeffner]I too have had issues with the policies not being applied to clients. I am running 3.9 and policy application is real sporadic.[/quote]

I'm seeing the same problem as ddeffner. Our school lab has a policy set to prohibit access to games (solitaire, minesweeper, pinball, etc), and it's spotty at best. We are running 3.9, all the other features work. Wonder if there's a conflict with policies being sent by the network login script...

~DRK2CMP

[ddeffner]

I have come no closer to finding a solution to this problem. Is there anything I can be looking for to help find an answer.

Thanks

[Richie_OLSJ]

I've found that the policies work great, except that if you set internet restrictions, they only apply if you close the browser and re-open it on the client machines - ok if you set policies before users log on, but not in the middle of a lesson when browser windows are already open.

Richie

[kickthepc]

I'm trialing ab tutor control at the moment, and when applying restrictions to websites have found it only works with IE. We encourage the students to use Firefox so having to tell them to use IE is a little annoying.

It could also be a problem if they are using one of the features which are broken in IE (for some reason some things just don't work on the students machines, presumably due to security settings breaking things they shouldn't be).

[ddeffner]

I am now trying the 3.10 client. I think I am beginning to put this together. The error still lies in applying policies, but now I am seeing a pattern. All the students log on as their own accounts and as such the computers in question are changing logins every hour. What I have noticed is that if the Policy is applied before people login, they will have no effect. If the policy is applied after they login but before the application in question is launched, the application will be locked out. Has anyone else seen this issue?

I will continue testing it from here and report back anything else that I may find

[ddeffner]

I have set up another lab and the same issue occurs with 3.10. Spotty protection at best. Some of the other vendors products nail this important criteria, but is there something I can look at to try and straighten this issue out?

Windows XP SP2 clients
Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1
Office 2003

Thanks
Dan

[Simon582]

I am currently trialing AB Tutor Control, the major problem we have at the moment is that we are finding that some temporary policies are remaining active (in following lessons) after the teacher machine has been turned off. We have tried to recreate the problem but as yet have only had limited success. We are running v3.10 on WinXP SP2 machines.
Has anyone else had this problem?
I'll be happy to provide more information if needed.

Thanks,
Simon

[jmg]

I have found that I have to explicitly block everything in the 'registry' section of policy manager even thoguh they appear to be blocked already. This seems to work, but is a bit of a pain.

Another problem (particularly with CMD.EXE) is that it remains blocked sometimes, even when the policy has been removed and the client machine rebooted.

Also, command.com isn't blocked sometimes (even though CMD.EXE is) and I have managed to FTP files out of the system/building when I wasn't supposed to be able to.

[Andy]

Hello All

Just a quick note to let you know that we are currently working on version 4.0. In this version we have completely reworked the Policies within AB tutor Control. This should solve a lot of these problems users have been experiencing. As with all new code, there may be a few teething problems, so again I would appreciate if you could let me know if you find any problems with Policies when version 4 is released - hopefully in a few weeks.

Andy