1 00:00:03,070 --> 00:00:03,630 Okay. 2 00:00:03,640 --> 00:00:09,280 So in this module, I'm going to talk about group policy preferences in a little bit more detail. 3 00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:15,340 So you'll remember from module two that I discussed preferences and talked about how they were different 4 00:00:15,340 --> 00:00:16,270 from policies. 5 00:00:17,290 --> 00:00:23,560 So let's kind of review that and see how preferences add to the mix in terms of group policy capabilities. 6 00:00:24,570 --> 00:00:29,190 So generally speaking, preferences don't prevent the user from changing them. 7 00:00:30,090 --> 00:00:32,610 And that's where the term preference comes from. 8 00:00:33,510 --> 00:00:39,090 Instead of a hard policy that prevents the user from doing something, a preference really suggests 9 00:00:39,090 --> 00:00:44,370 or configures a setting, but does not prevent the user from going in and changing that afterward. 10 00:00:45,310 --> 00:00:47,470 Now, that's not universally the case. 11 00:00:47,470 --> 00:00:52,630 And I'll talk about a scenario where preferences is actually enforceable by you, the administrator 12 00:00:52,630 --> 00:00:55,540 on the user or on their computer more specifically. 13 00:00:56,480 --> 00:01:02,600 But in general preferences are not locking out the UI in order to make those configuration changes. 14 00:01:03,600 --> 00:01:09,360 Preferences provide this really kind of nifty feature around filtering called item level targeting. 15 00:01:09,480 --> 00:01:12,300 And this is a preceding filtering capability. 16 00:01:13,310 --> 00:01:19,340 So you remember from earlier modules, I talked about a couple different kinds of group policy filtering. 17 00:01:20,290 --> 00:01:24,610 One is security group filtering and the other is WMD filtering. 18 00:01:24,610 --> 00:01:30,490 And both of those are at the whole GPO level, whereas item level targeting is on the per preference 19 00:01:30,490 --> 00:01:31,210 item level. 20 00:01:32,200 --> 00:01:36,100 So we'll talk a little bit more about that and I'll show you that in a bit. 21 00:01:37,080 --> 00:01:43,530 Now group policy preferences is actually it was actually originally a third party product that Microsoft 22 00:01:43,530 --> 00:01:46,230 acquired from a company called Desktop Standard. 23 00:01:46,260 --> 00:01:48,360 It used to be called policy maker. 24 00:01:49,310 --> 00:01:52,190 And its job in life was to extend the group policy. 25 00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:57,410 Of course, I mentioned early on in the course that group policy is perfectly extensible if you're a 26 00:01:57,410 --> 00:02:00,140 developer and have the capability of doing so. 27 00:02:01,050 --> 00:02:04,200 And that's exactly what this third party ad on did. 28 00:02:05,180 --> 00:02:08,420 It still looks and feels different than core group policy, though. 29 00:02:08,540 --> 00:02:13,250 And so when you're in the UI and you're managing group policy preferences, you know you're managing 30 00:02:13,250 --> 00:02:18,590 it because it really is several years newer than sort of the core capabilities that were built into 31 00:02:18,590 --> 00:02:19,490 group policy. 32 00:02:20,460 --> 00:02:24,420 So let's look at the areas the group policy preferences support. 33 00:02:25,430 --> 00:02:27,110 They're pretty substantial. 34 00:02:28,060 --> 00:02:30,010 We've got environment variables. 35 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:34,570 So the ability to set per computer and per user environment variables. 36 00:02:35,550 --> 00:02:40,020 Users and groups managing local users and local group memberships. 37 00:02:41,030 --> 00:02:42,680 GPP devices. 38 00:02:43,660 --> 00:02:50,110 This is where you can restrict, for example, USB devices from being used by a computer or user. 39 00:02:51,140 --> 00:02:52,490 Network options. 40 00:02:53,480 --> 00:02:57,440 This is where you can set some network parameters such as VPN. 41 00:02:58,420 --> 00:03:01,900 Similar options related to network configuration. 42 00:03:02,900 --> 00:03:04,310 Files and folders. 43 00:03:05,290 --> 00:03:09,850 This is where you can distribute files and create folders on target systems. 44 00:03:10,820 --> 00:03:12,170 Network shares. 45 00:03:13,180 --> 00:03:19,480 Principally this is targeted at servers and it allows you to use group policy to create network shares. 46 00:03:20,450 --> 00:03:21,650 Data sources. 47 00:03:22,650 --> 00:03:29,070 This is the ability to configure ODC data sources not commonly used as much today, but still out there 48 00:03:29,070 --> 00:03:32,220 in group policy preferences provides a way to manage that. 49 00:03:33,180 --> 00:03:36,770 Annie files another kind of blast from the past here. 50 00:03:37,750 --> 00:03:42,070 Most applications no longer use any files, but some still do. 51 00:03:42,950 --> 00:03:47,480 And with preferences you can manage their the contents of those iron files. 52 00:03:48,510 --> 00:03:49,560 Services. 53 00:03:50,530 --> 00:03:56,020 Again, you can configure start up type of the service account that's being used by the service. 54 00:03:56,170 --> 00:03:59,530 All of that's fully configurable in preferences. 55 00:04:00,570 --> 00:04:01,830 Folder options. 56 00:04:02,820 --> 00:04:08,520 So if you go into Explorer and you save you folder options, there's a number of features that you can 57 00:04:08,520 --> 00:04:08,910 set. 58 00:04:08,910 --> 00:04:14,280 And this this particular area of group policy preferences lets you push that down through policy. 59 00:04:15,260 --> 00:04:21,050 Schedule tasks lets you create a variety of different scheduled task types on your Windows system. 60 00:04:21,990 --> 00:04:27,420 So you can actually push scheduled tasks jobs to systems using group policy preferences. 61 00:04:28,420 --> 00:04:29,440 Registry. 62 00:04:30,410 --> 00:04:33,740 This is something I'll talk about in demo in this module. 63 00:04:34,720 --> 00:04:40,030 This is the ability to kind of have a freelance capability around modifying the registry. 64 00:04:41,050 --> 00:04:47,350 So instead of being tied to admin templates in the Adam X file, this really lets you kind of do really 65 00:04:47,350 --> 00:04:49,180 whatever you want in the registry. 66 00:04:50,150 --> 00:04:51,050 Printers. 67 00:04:52,060 --> 00:04:56,230 The ability to create printer mappings for users of various types. 68 00:04:57,270 --> 00:04:58,260 Short cuts. 69 00:04:59,220 --> 00:05:03,090 The ability to distribute shortcuts to the user's desktop. 70 00:05:04,080 --> 00:05:09,780 Shortcuts could be favorites in IEEE, or they could be just your typical old shortcut that shows up 71 00:05:09,780 --> 00:05:11,880 on the desktop or on the start menu. 72 00:05:12,800 --> 00:05:13,970 Power options. 73 00:05:14,970 --> 00:05:18,150 The ability to set power plans and power schemes. 74 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:24,950 So in other words, being able to push out the configuration of the preferred power scheme for all of 75 00:05:24,950 --> 00:05:25,820 your desktops. 76 00:05:26,850 --> 00:05:32,640 So if you want to save power and ensure that all systems have a consistent power plan, this is the 77 00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:33,780 place you can do that. 78 00:05:34,770 --> 00:05:40,830 Drive mappings, a really common one, probably the most common use of GP preferences and it lets you 79 00:05:40,830 --> 00:05:42,990 do drive mappings for your users. 80 00:05:43,980 --> 00:05:48,630 Start menu the ability to customize the start menu and what appears on it. 81 00:05:49,590 --> 00:05:50,760 Regional options. 82 00:05:50,820 --> 00:05:53,540 This is the those options under control panel. 83 00:05:53,550 --> 00:05:58,950 But let you control the culture and the display format of various representations like dollars and dates 84 00:05:58,950 --> 00:05:59,940 and things like that. 85 00:06:00,900 --> 00:06:02,250 Internet options. 86 00:06:03,230 --> 00:06:05,570 This is where you can configure IEEE. 87 00:06:06,490 --> 00:06:09,280 We talked about this in a previous module. 88 00:06:10,220 --> 00:06:13,420 In addition, preferences has this notion of actions. 89 00:06:13,430 --> 00:06:19,130 So every preference item or most preference items have the ability to set the action type when you set 90 00:06:19,130 --> 00:06:19,850 the preference. 91 00:06:20,850 --> 00:06:25,890 In this case, I'm showing you a screenshot of the drive mapping preference item and you'll notice the 92 00:06:25,890 --> 00:06:30,390 dropdown that lets you select the preference or I'm sorry, the action type. 93 00:06:31,370 --> 00:06:36,500 So create is create the setting if it doesn't exist, but only do that once. 94 00:06:37,500 --> 00:06:44,040 Replaces, remove the existing setting and then set the new value every time the policy processes. 95 00:06:45,060 --> 00:06:51,240 So this is very similar in behavior to what Adnan templates does in order to not tattoo the registry. 96 00:06:52,200 --> 00:06:56,850 It first removes the setting and then it replies whatever settings now exist. 97 00:06:57,820 --> 00:07:00,490 Update a little different from replace. 98 00:07:01,490 --> 00:07:05,620 This lets set the value only if it's different from the policy. 99 00:07:06,610 --> 00:07:08,560 So you're only going to do that. 100 00:07:08,650 --> 00:07:13,870 You're only going to do work if there's a change that has to be made either to the existing value on 101 00:07:13,870 --> 00:07:17,260 the system, or maybe it's just never been delivered to the system. 102 00:07:18,220 --> 00:07:22,840 So update will make that change and then leave it alone until it changes again. 103 00:07:23,770 --> 00:07:27,130 And then delete will delete the setting if it exists. 104 00:07:28,110 --> 00:07:32,160 Now again, not all GP preferences areas have actions. 105 00:07:32,160 --> 00:07:38,130 So you'll notice if you go back to the module on Internet Explorer configuration, that the GP preferences 106 00:07:38,130 --> 00:07:40,230 internet options did not have actions. 107 00:07:41,180 --> 00:07:47,180 And then finally, another kind of part of preferences that I discussed, item level targeting. 108 00:07:48,130 --> 00:07:53,020 So what you're seeing here is a screenshot of all the different item level targeting types. 109 00:07:54,020 --> 00:07:56,390 This is accessible from the common tab. 110 00:07:56,540 --> 00:07:58,670 And I'm going to show you that in a second. 111 00:07:59,650 --> 00:08:06,160 And it's available on a percentage basis, and it provides these 27 different criteria for filtering. 112 00:08:07,090 --> 00:08:10,540 You can also do some logical operations like ends indoors. 113 00:08:10,750 --> 00:08:14,380 You can combine filters into a fairly complex set of logic. 114 00:08:15,340 --> 00:08:20,350 Now, I'll tell you again, is separate from security group or WMI filtering. 115 00:08:21,320 --> 00:08:26,720 So now let's dive in and look at an example of how group policy preferences operates.