Group Policy Preferences

Welcome to the ITFreeTraining course looking into Group Policy preferences and how they operate. Group Policy Preferences in Windows is a system that expands the original functionality of Group Policy giving the administrator more control over the computers that they support.

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Group Policy Preferences
0:14 – Group Policy was originally developed by a third party company that was called PolicyMaker. Microsoft acquired the company that made PolicyMaker. Using the Group Policy Preferences, the administrator can replace a lot of the functionality that would have been previously done with login scripts. Group Policy preferences was added to Windows in Windows Server 2008. In order to work, it requires the client side extension. This is not included in previous operating systems, however is available for download for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2003. This can be done through direct download or via Windows update.
0:56 – To understand how Group Policy preferences work, I will open Server Manager from the quick launch bar. Once open, I will select Group Policy Management under the Tools menu. To look at how to configure Group Policy Preferences, I will right click on “Default Domain Policy” and select Edit. From “Group Policy Management Editor” you will notice that under “Computer Configuration” and “User Configuration” there is a container called “Preferences”. If I expand “Preferences” under “Computer Configuration” you can see all the settings that are under preferences within the two containers “Windows Settings” and “Control Panel Settings”.
1:39 – When “Windows Settings” is expanded, you will see that there are seven different areas in which settings can be configured. The first one is “Environment”. This allows the administrator to create environment variables. These are dynamic values that applications can use. If I open a command prompt and run the command “set”, you can see all of the environment variables in the system. Applications can read this and find out information, like the path of the Windows folder. The administrator is able to add their own values and change them as required and any application running on the computer will be able to read them. If I now go back to “Group Policy Management Editor”, I will select the next container down “Files”. This allows additional files to be added using Group Policy. For example, if you wanted to add the company’s wallpaper to the local computer you can do this using these settings. In some cases, you may need to create folders to store files in; this can be done with the next container “Folders”.
 
2:47 – The next container down is “Ini Files”. Before the registry, settings were kept in Ini files; some applications still use Ini files, so you can use this to add settings to those Ini files if you require them. The next container down is the “Registry” which allows settings to be added to the registry. Whenever possible it is best to use other settings in Group Policy like Administrative Templates to configure the registry based settings. This is because settings configured in Administrative Templates can be reversed if they are no longer required, where in contrast, settings in the registry are permanent until they are overwritten or deleted. If there are no Group Policy settings that exist for the setting that you want to create, this is a useful way to configure the registry.
3:36 – The next container down is “Network Shares”. This allows network drives to be automatically  connected. Traditionally this was done with login scripts, so you can see how Group Policy is able to replace some of the functionality that would have been traditionally done with login scripts. The last container allows “Shortcuts” to be created on the computer. This helps the administrator to customize the computer in their domain. The next section down is “Control Panel Settings”. This, as the name suggests, allows the administrator to configure options that would normally be configured in the Control Panel. There are nine containers under “Control Panel Settings” that can be configured. Most are fairly self-explanatory and each interface for each container is very similar. To get an understanding of the interface, I will...

This description is too long, please check out http://itfreetraining.com/gp/preferences for the full description.

References
“Group Policy Preferences Getting Started Guide” https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...
“Configure Common Options” https://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/l...

Credits
Trainer: Austin Mason http://ITFreeTraining.com
Voice Talent: HP Lewis http://hplewis.com
Companion Document: Phillip Guld https://philguld.com
Video Production: Kevin Luttman http://www.KevinLuttman.com
Quality Assurance: Brett Batson http://www.pbb-proofreading.uk