Specify the Location of Rights Policy Templates

With Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, rights policy templates can automatically obtain rights policy templates from an AD RMS cluster and keep them up-to-date through an automated scheduled task. For more information about creating this scheduled task, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=93718. However, you might need to continue exporting templates to a folder for distributing them manually to clients not running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. The location you specify by using the following procedure creates a point from which you can distribute the templates to client computers.

	Note
	Only distributed rights policy templates are stored in the shared folder. If you are using archived rights policy templates, you must change them to distributed rights policy templates before they can appear in the shared folder.

If you are using Microsoft Office 2003 or later as your AD RMS-enabled application, the location where Microsoft Office applications look for the rights policy templates is controlled by the AdminTemplatePath registry key. This registry entry should be configured to point to a local folder where the rights policy templates are stored. For more information about deploying rights policy templates, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=81070.

Membership in the local AD RMS Template Administrators, or equivalent, is the minimum required to complete this procedure.

To specify the location of rights policy templates

1. Create a folder on the server to be used to store the exported rights policy templates.

2. Open the Active Directory Rights Management Services console and expand the AD RMS cluster.

3. In the console tree, click Rights Policy Templates.

4. In the Actions pane, click Properties, and then select the Enable export check box.

5. In the Specify templates file location (UNC) box, type the location of a shared folder in which to store the rights policy templates for this cluster, in the format \\server_name\share_name or click Browse to navigate to the location.

6. Make sure that the following criteria are met before exporting the rights policy templates:

   • The AD RMS Service Group must have Write permission on the shared folder.
     
     
   • Shared folders for templates are not created in the core folders that are used by AD RMS, such as the _wmcs folder in the %systemdrive%\inetpub\wwwroot folder.
     
     
   • Make sure that the shared folder is accessible before exporting the rights policy templates to it. Otherwise, you need to clear the Enable export box, click OK, set the Enable export box, type the name of the shared folder again, and then click OK. This action forces all rights policy templates to export to the shared folder.
     
     

7. Click OK.

8. After you export the rights policy templates, make them available to users. Different versions of the AD RMS client and AD RMS-enabled applications have different means of specifying where rights policy templates should be stored on the client computer. Consult the manufacturer of the AD RMS-enabled application to determine how rights policy templates are handled for that application.