Joseph Hinkle at MyITForum.com

Presented by Jason Leznek and Lilia Gutnik. Props to Lilia for mentioning XKCD. She seems almost as sarcastic as the comic. Not that I know anything about sarcasm.

• What are group policy preferences?
  • Acquired Desktop Standard in Oct 2006
  • GPOVault - Advanced Group Policy Management - MDOP
  • PolicyMaker - managing clients through group policy - a component of GPMC in Windows Server 2008 and also part of Remote Server Administration Tools
  
  
• Where can I manage GPP?
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Vista SP1 with rSAT
  
  
• What can GPP manage?
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Client Side Extensions for Vista RTM+, Server 2003 SP1, XP SP2+
  
  
• What do GPPs do?
  • Preferences are not true policy - set defaults
  • Not limited to policy-aware settings
  • Better admin UI
  • Better targeting
  
  
• Policies vs prefrences
  • Policy - Admin sets and locks user out - highest precedence - specific registry keys
  • Preferences - user may change - apps don't have to be policy aware - can be pulled back if it fall out of scope
  
  
• Precedence - LSDOU - Computer beats users, policies beat preferences, Client-side extension process order
• More settings are available - Control Panel: Folder options, scheduled tasks, services, power options; Windows Settings: drive maps, folders, shortcuts, registry keys, applications
• UI is same as end-user - looks like the appropriate dialog
• Better targeting - Can target individual computers, IP range, time, OS, free space, etc
• Added drag and drop and multiple instance support
• New settings can create, replace, update, or delete - Can be set to apply once and not to reapply
• Can control local admin group on a user by user basis
• Report - all included, including targeting criterion - GPResults shows winning items, but doesn't necessarily reflect final settings