Deploying Google Chrome

[Martin Hughes]

Hi all

Another query - I work in many schools all over NZ and I often spend an inordinate amount of time installing and optimising the setup of chrome on teacher laptops - eg selecting 4 or 5 tabs that will always open up when the browser is started, ticking various boxes in settings so that home and favourite buttons appear and so that the teacher is ALWAYS prompted where to save stuff that they have downloaded. In addition, I then have to manually install various apps. Is there some clever way whereby I can short circuit some of this clunky process? Deploying the base version of Chrome works well in many schools, through AD group policies etc - however, the end user setup always has to be done, it seems.

Thanks

Martin

[Simon - OBHS]

There are group policies available for Google Chrome for Business to tweak all those settings.

http://support.google.com/chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187202

Extensions:

http://support.google.com/chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188453

FAQs:

http://support.google.com/chromeos/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188447&topic=2936229&ctx=topic

[Simon - OBHS]

Also, if you get the end user to log into chrome so it syncs the settings, bookmarks, apps, skins, etc... the next time they use another computer or laptop replaced, when they log into chrome it will sync all those settings.

I don't believe there is a way of setting up their log in via group policy or any other automated way.

[James Nimmo]

Like Simon said can definitely be done with the group policy extension, settings can take a bit of trial and error to get right as they aren't totally self descriptive.

On a side note, for a long time Chrome wasn't really an option for people using Mandatory Profiles, they seem to have fixed the bug now letting you set the users data directory to store somewhere that persists, like students home drive.

Now that is fixed we are using Chrome as the default browser for everyone

My settings (for students)

Disable syncrhonization of data with Google (stops the login prompt)

Import bookmarks from default browser on first run - Disabled

Import browsing history from default browser on first run - Disabled

Import of homepage from default browser on first run - Disabled

Import saved passwords from default browser on first run - Disabled

Import search engines from default - Disabled

Incognito mode availability - Incognito mode disabled

Set Chrome as Default Browser - Enabled

Set disk cache directory - Enabled ( ${local_app_data}\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default )

Set user data directory - H:\Windows\Chrome

Show home button on toolbar - Enabled

Configure the home page URL - Enabled

Startup pages/Action on startup - Open a list of URLs

URLs to open on startup - http://intranet/students       

etc

[Gerard MacManus]

are you blocking the google chrome apps?

Gerard

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Techies for schools" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to techies-for-sch...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
 
 

[Nevyn]

For a more cross platform approach:-

The preferences file is a better bet (and is actually quite a bit easier than trying to achieve the same things in firefox).

http://www.chromium.org/administrators/configuring-other-preferences

This also has the advantage in that the user stays in control (i.e. preferences can be overwritten by the user rather than those settings being forced upon them).

Regards,
Nevyn
http://nevsramblings.blogspot.com/