Forcing computers to use the local Offline Files cache when online

Let's say you want users of Windows 7 computers to use the local Offline Files cache instead of the share on the server whenever the client is connected to the network the server is on. That way, read requests for files marked for offline use will be fulfilled from the cache and not copied down over the network.

To do this, you can use the "Configure slow-link mode" Group Policy setting for Offline Files. If you set the latency threshold to a small time interval such as 1ms in this policy for the user's Documents share, it will keep the share in slow-link mode so that the user will always be working directly from their local Offline Files cache. In addition, you can also configure the frequency of background synchronization if needed to make it more or less frequent than the default value of 6 hours so that files in the local cache are copied to the server with sufficient frequency.

Mitch Tulloch is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and widely recognized expert on Windows administration, deployment and virtualization. For more tips by Mitch you can follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.

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