Efficient central management of Windows libraries

A Question of View

Article from ADMIN 09/2012

By Thomas Joos

Libraries in Windows 7 can group physical directories logically and offer a shared view of the files they contain, improving visibility of important data and increasing efficiency in document management.

In a jungle of shares and network drives, it's easy to lose track – Where exactly are those templates for vacation application forms? Libraries let you collate different storage locations to create a shared view.

This setup makes sense, for example, when administrators redirect folders or whole libraries to servers. Not only can you do this in a normal Active Directory domain in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, but also on SBS 2011. In combination with Windows Server 2008 R2, you can even use group policies to manage libraries.

Windows displays libraries directly in Explorer in a separate area on the left-hand side of the browser, even without Active Directory (Figure 1). Users can create new libraries via the context menu of an existing library or modify the settings for standard libraries.

Figure 1: Efficient use of libraries in Windows 7.

The properties of a library define the physical directories it contains and displays; libraries can span multiple physical drives and different directories. At the press of a button, you see the content of all the included directories in a single window. When a user selects a library to store a file, Windows saves the file in the configured directory. Additionally, you can specify the type of files the library should contain. Windows then optimizes the library

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