The Profile Editor is used to create new profiles and edit existing profiles. You can also view the current settings and options for the currently selected profile.
You can open the Profile Editor by either clicking the name of a profile in one of the tables in the Profiles — Tree View content area or in the Profiles — All page.
To create a new profile, see Creating a new Profile.
The Profile Editor contains the following tab pages:
General Properties
Configuration Settings
Assigned Elements
Settings Summary
Advanced Options
The General Properties page allows you to specify general information about a profile. This page is the default view of the Profile Editor window.
The Profile Editor appears when the user creates a new profile by clicking the New button.
In the Name field, type the desired name of the profile.
Add any comments into the Comments field.
You can leave the Comments field blank.
The Author and Last Modified fields are read-only, and cannot be modified. The Author field displays the profiles author, and the Last Modified field shows the date and time of the last modification.
Click the Save button.
If you close the window before saving any new information, and warning dialog appears that prompts you to save the settings.
The Configuration Settings page allows you to view and edit the configuration settings that are stored in the selected profile.
To view a profile's configuration setting, navigate to the setting from the list of categories on the right side of the page.
The configuration settings are organized hierarchically into categories that directly correspond to the configuration options of desktop applications, such as StarOfficeTM, MozillaTM, Evolution or Gnome.
Click the desired configuration setting.
The selected profile's settings appear, which displays the available settings for that profile. If necessary, additional context information is provided, such as the effects of individual settings or the allowed value range.
If you select a category rather than a configuration setting, a table appears that lists that categories settings or sub-categories.
For each configuration setting, you can either specify a concrete value, or you can leave the setting undefined.
If you leave the setting undefined, the application will not be affected by this profile setting, and instead takes advantage of its own factory built-in default value. In general, the Profile Editor lists and applications default value through additional help text or, if possible, through a marker directly in the setting's options list.
It is important to understand that several profiles might affect the same user. For example, you can create a profile with settings for a specific organization. These settings are automatically available for all users that are part of this organization. Similarly, you can define additional profiles with configuration settings for sub-organizations. These may overwrite settings of the parent organization, for example, different proxy settings for sub-organizations would be defined, but leave other settings unchanged. The effective settings for a specific user would then be the result of a merge process including all profiles assigned to the organization, sub-organizations and probably the user.
In some cases you might want to control this merge process and want to enforce a configuration setting, meaning that it should not be possible for other profiles to overwrite your setting and to define a different value. The Profile Editor allows to specify for each setting the desired merging behavior. The default is that other "profiles may overwrite" a setting. Deselecting this option will enforce the setting and other profiles can no longer overwrite your value.
The Assigned Elements page lists the elements that are assigned to the current profile, and allows you to assign or unassign elements.
The current profiles elements are displayed in the Assigned Elements table, which contains the following information:
Name: the name of the element to which the current profile is assigned.
Path: the location of the element to which the current profile is assigned.
Click the Assign Element button.
A window containing a navigation tree appears.
Navigate the tree, and select the desired element.
If you can't find the desired element in the tree, you can click the Search button to open the Search window and find the element.
The element then appears in the Assigned Elements table, now assigned to the current profile.
Select the check box corresponding to the element that you want to unassign.
Click the Unassign Element button.
The element is now not assigned to the current profile, and disappears from the Assigned Elements table.
The Settings Summary is a read-only view of all configuration settings that contain data for the selected profile.
The Settings Summary page contains the Settings Summary table. This table shows the configuration settings that contain data for the current profile, grouped into categories. The table has the following fields:
Name: the setting name
Value: the setting value
Status: the status column contains entries of the type “Defined in <profileName>, where <profileName> is a link that switches the Profile Editor to the Configuration Settings page, and navigates to the particular setting within this profile.
The Advanced Options page allows you to specify advanced options for the current profile. There are two main options available on this page:
Applicable from: allows you to move the profile to a different storage location in the organization or domain tree. By moving the storage location, you are also changing the set of elements that the profile can be assigned or applied to. This is because a profile can only be assigned to the element it is stored at, or assigned to the elements that are in the subtree below the element at which it is stored.
You can not change the “Application from” parameter in a way that the resulting layout would violate the rule mentioned above. For example, this would happen if you move a profile down the tree hierarchy, and an existing assignment connecting the profile to an element below the profile's storage location would, after the movement of the profile, connect the profile to the same element. But now, the element is above the storage location of the profile. If the you try this, the action is cancelled, and a warning message is displayed.
Merge Order: specifies the order in which all profiles stored at the same element are merged.
Because more than one profile can be assigned to a single element and more than one profile can define the same setting, the order in which the profiles are merged for a single element must be defined. This resolves the conflicts of one setting being defined in two or more profiles assigned to the same element.
The storage location is used first to determine the merge order. The profile stored at an element that is located closer to the root of the tree is merged first. As a consequence, the profile that is stored deeper in the tree hierarchy is merged secondly. The settings of a profile merged later overwrite the settings of a profile merged earlier.
Click the Change button.
A window containing a navigation tree appears.
Navigate the tree, and select the desired element.
If you can't find the desired element in the tree, you can click the Search button to open the Search window and find the element.
Click the OK button.