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Started: 07/10/2008 12:16 by jonoble

Group Policy Preferences

When Microsoft introduced Group Policy Preferences with Windows Server 2008, they gave sys admins the ability to easily do a bunch of common tasks (adding domain users to local groups, mapping drives, creating shortcuts, etc) in Group Policy without having to write scripts. I'm a fan of scripting, but I still see that as a good thing!

Yesterday TechNet Edge released a video about Group Policy Preferences, which I'd recommend checking out. It starts off slow, but then talks about how you can manage the scope of different preferences, so within the same Group Policy Object you could map a particular drive for everyone using a PC under the policy scope, plus additional ones just for users in particular security groups. This means that you can have a relatively complex arrangement of drive mappings for all the users in a department or OU in the same policy. :-)

Posted: 24/04/2009 09:04 by MatF

View Properties

We've upgraded pretty much all of our DC's here at UoW and have been using GPO prefs since before Chrsitmas. Everything that I had previously done with VBS I can now do in a couple of clicks through the Prefs GUI. Like Jonathon I'm happiest when I'm scripting a solution but prefs mean that I can get solutions turned around much quicker.

You need to remember that you also need that you'll need to deploy the client-side extensions before hand (KB943729 for XP) before any settings will apply.

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