In this recipe, we will create a shortcut to a folder and place it on the Start menu. Having a shortcut to a folder makes it easy to get to child files and subfolders without having a shortcut for each one. For example, if we're installing a suite of developer tools, we might provide a link to a folder of sample projects. The shortcut will open the Windows file explorer so the user can browse through the projects with ease. This also makes it easy for us to change what's in that folder without worrying too much about updating the shortcuts.

We'll add a folder for logfiles under the C:\ProgramData folder, which is a machine-level folder that's meant to store things such as logs, configuration settings, and other dynamic files. To make things simple, we'll install our log files folder as an empty directory. Recall that we'll need to use the CreateFolder element to ensure that the Windows installer adds the directory even though it's empty.