How to force the Internet Explorer home page to be the Mail Archiver search

Overview

You have deployed Exclaimer Mail Archiver in your environment. You would like to have your users' Internet Explorer home-page set to the Mail Archiver search web-site for their convenience.

Resolution

Using Group Policy (a feature of Microsoft Active Directory) you can quickly and easily update all your Domain Computers to have their Internet Explorer home page set to the Mail Archiver search web-site without needing to visit each computer in your organization. To achieve this perform the following steps on a Domain Controller in your environment:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, Administrative Tools
2. Click Group Policy Management to open the Group Policy Management console
3. From the tree on the left, expand Forest, Domains and then click your domain:
   
4. In the central pane, the list of policies appears
5. Right-click the domain policy and from the menu select Edit
6. The Group Policy Management Editor window opens
7. From the tree on the left, expand User Configuration, Windows Settings, Internet Explorer Maintenance and then click URLs
   
8. From the right-pane, double-click Important URLs to open the Important URLs dialog
9. Check the Customize Home page URL checkbox
10. In the Home page URL text box enter the address (including port) for the Mail Archiver search, for example:

    http://archiver:53444
    	

    
    
    Note: If you use an Intranet address the web-site will only be accessible from inside your corporate network. For users with portable laptop computers that wish to use the search outside the corporate network you may need to setup an external internet address for the web-site or use a VPN connection
11. Click OK. You are returned to the Group Policy Management Editor
12. Close the Group Policy Management Editor. You are returned to the Group Policy Management console
13. Close the Group Policy Management console

Your changes are updated to Group Policy immediately. Computers on your network will receive the new settings the next time their group policy is updated - this may take several hours. To force an immediate update on a specific computer, run the following command on that specific computer: gpupdate /force

More Information

These steps are only applicable for Microsoft Internet Explorer. For other internet browsers, please contact the vendor.