Would not recommend a copy of icons on your item #3 though.
Much better to just create the shortcut on the fly with KiX and a pre-coded UDF (User Defined Function)

There are over 600 UDF scripts already written to do just about anything you can think of on a Network. The good thing is, that if there is not one to do what you want already you can get help to write one and then share it with others.