Splitting abcontrol.dat file

[Richie_OLSJ]

It would be nice if there was a way of splitting the dat file into policies and rooms. This would then enable me to have one set of policies that could be applied to multiple rooms without having to maintain policies across multiple abcontrol.dat files (we are in a situation that we need to only have one room visible for each room that has abtutor admin on

[meastaugh1]

Do you know you can use the -p and -g switches at the command line (shortcut) to launch Tutor to use a shared abcontrol.dat and launch into a particular group (room) respectively?

[Richie_OLSJ]

Yes, I've just found that in the documentation. However, how do I then stop the user from clicking on the Find button and choosing another classroom?

[Richie_OLSJ]

ok, perhaps if i just tried these things first I wouldn't have to ask lol.
it works and doesn't let you change classrooms - great

[Richie_OLSJ]

Alternatively... if you click on find a second time it DOES prompt for the room. DAMN!!!!!

[meastaugh1]

I agree, it would be useful to lock it down further. Perhaps a parameter that could disable the Find button, which could then be used with the -g parameter.

Or possibly could be implemented as a group restriction. So, the Find button could be unticked (in the same way that you can disable Shutdown, Logoff etc for a group). So, if a user launches ABTC with the -g command, and the group has Find disabled, the user wouldn't be able to browse groups.

[Richie_OLSJ]

Hmm, perhaps something to suggest for V5.5 then.
This would be really useful as I don't want to be having to edit 15 abcontrol.dat files for each policy change

[Andy]

Yes, this is a good suggestion. We are looking at what to add to version 6 which is under development at the moment.

One thing we are considering is to add Active Directory/Group Policy support. This would simply allow you to control all settings normally stored in the ABControl.dat file but from Active Directory that can be applied via Group Policies. That way you can create groups/policies etc and apply them to set AD groups or even individual users. The only problem here is you need to have good knowledge of managing AD and Group polices on the server. One drawback to this is that AD/GP changes are not normally applied immediately and sometimes they are not applied until a reboot!

[Richie_OLSJ]

Very nice...
But no chance of having a means of disabling the Find button or limiting to just the room specified in the command line parameter for V5.5? Would help us in the short term (not likely to be much money in budget to pay for V6 in near future )