Roaming Profiles: Ensuring a Consistent Browser Experience
Table of Contents
Roaming Profiles: Ensuring a Consistent Browser Experience
Set up roaming profiles
Roaming profiles are a fundamental Windows feature that delivers a consistent
and personalized computing environment, allowing a user's browser data to follow them
across various domain-joined computers. This mechanism is network-centric, providing
data persistence without needing cloud synchronization or active internet access, which
is especially beneficial in high-security or air-gapped corporate and educational
settings.Profile Components
A roaming profile synchronizes essential user-specific browser data, ensuring
continuity regardless of the physical machine used:
- Bookmarks and Favorites: Web links and folder structures are preserved.
- Browser Settings: Custom configurations, including the default homepage, display options, and security settings, remain consistent.
- Saved Passwords: Encrypted login credentials are securely synchronized for easy access.
- Extensions: Installed browser add-ons are maintained to ensure customized functionality.
- History: Core browsing history is typically included, though caching may be managed separately for optimal performance.
The Local Network Synchronization Mechanism
The process by which a roaming profile enables user mobility relies on
local network server interaction:
- Login: Upon signing into any Windows domain machine, the system identifies the user's roaming profile path on the central network server.
- Download: The complete copy of the user's profile data is transferred from the server to the local computer's hard drive.
- Usage: The user works with and modifies this local copy of the data.
- Logoff: When the session ends, the operating system copies all changes (e.g., new bookmarks, setting modifications) back to the central network server, ensuring the profile is up-to-date for the next login.
Prisma Browser Implementation
Enable Roaming Profiles:
Set the following registry key on each machine:
| Registry Path | Registry Value | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Software\Policies\Palo Alto Networks\PrismaAccessBrowser | RoamingProfileSupportEnabled | 1 (DWORD) |
The Profile Sync control only governs
cloud synchronization and has no impact on this policy.
Change roaming profile Location (Optional)
Each user’s roaming profile is kept in a file named profile.pb. By default,
this file is located in %APPDATA%\Palo Alto
Networks\PrismaAccessBrowser\User Data\Default\profile.pb, under the
Windows Roaming Profile directory.
To configure a different location for profile.pb, set the
RoamingProfileLocation registry key. You can use any of the supported path variables.
If setting the RoamingProfileLocation policy, do not set
either the UserDataDir or the DiskCacheDir policy to the same directory. Doing so
may cause the local profiles to interfere with roaming profiles and voids the
benefits of the feature.
You can point RoamingProfileLocation directly to a network
share (e.g., \\Server\Profiles\${user_name}). In this case, Prisma
Browser reads/writes profile.pb directly to the network. Windows
Roaming User Profiles is not required.
To customize the location, set:
| Registry Path | Registry Value | |
|---|---|---|
| Software\Policies\Palo Alto Networks\PrismaAccessBrowser | RoamingProfileLocation | {roaming_app_data}\PrismaBrowser |
If you disable the RoamingProfileSupportEnabled policy or don't configure it, this
value stored in this policy isn't used.
Example Setup
| Syncs | Does Not Sync |
|---|---|
| Bookmarks | Cookies |
| Saved Passwords | Active Sessions |
| Autofill Data | Cached Files |
| Browser Settings | Downloads |
| Extensions | Temporary Data |
| Browseing History |
| Limitation | Details |
|---|---|
| No simultaneous sessions | Users cannot run Prisma Browser on two machines at the same time. The profile file is locked during use. |
| Mutually exclusive with cloud sync | Roaming Profiles and Browser Cloud Sync cannot be used together. You need to choose one. |
| Single profile recommended | Multiple browser profiles may not map correctly across the machines. |
| Large profiles slow login | Thousands of bookmarks / extensions increase Windows login time |
Your users cannot run Prisma Browser on two machines at
the same time. The profile is locked during use.