Active Directory: Managing user settings with Group Policy

Name: Active Directory: Managing user settings with Group Policy
Rating: 4.3 (69 reviews)

Administrative Group Policy (GPOs) templates ; Folder Redirection, software installation, scripts; Item-level targeting

Created byVitalii Shumylo

Last updated 2/2026

English

English [Auto],

What you'll learn

Implement administrative Group Policy (GPOs) templates
Configure Folder Redirection, software installation, and scripts
Configure Group Policy preferences
Item-level targeting with Group Policy (GPOs)

Course content

3 sections • 21 lectures • 1h 36m total length

Course Overview1:26
Learn to implement group policy objects to standardize desktops using administrative templates, configure folder redirection, manage software installation, and deploy scripts, while mastering Group Policy preferences.
Section Overview3:11
Discover administrative templates in Group Policy, covering computer and user sections and central store creation. Learn to configure settings and describe policy definitions, central store usage, and security templates.
What are administrative templates?3:26
Discover how administrative templates in group policy manage computer and user settings, navigate registry hives, and resolve conflicts, with version-specific availability and organized subnodes for Windows components.
What are .adm and .admx files?5:01
Understand how adm and admx files define group policy templates, with admx language neutral and adml language-specific, stored in the policy definitions folder and central store.
Overview of the central store3:59
Create a central store of admx and adml policy definitions for domain-based Active Directory, enabling consistent group policy templates across the network and automatic fallback to local when unavailable.
Demonstration: Configuring settings with administrative templates12:33
Explore configuring administrative templates, filtering policies, and adding commands in the group policy management editor, and learn to copy, backup, and import GPOs.
Importing security templates5:56
Explore how to import security templates into group policy to configure, distribute, and backup windows security settings using tools like secedit command-line tool, security templates snap-in, and security compliance manager.
Managing administrative templates3:50
Download or create administrative templates, add them to the central store, customize templates in the group policy management editor, and deploy the GPO to extend user and computer settings.

Section Overview3:44
Explore configuring folder redirection and scripts with Group Policy, identify redirectable folders (documents, favorites, app data roaming and app data), and deploy logon, logoff, startup, and shutdown scripts.
What is Folder Redirection?2:42
Redirect folders such as app data, desktop, documents, downloads, and more to a network server, while appearing on the local drive and staying synchronized for cross-device access and backups.
Settings for configuring Folder Redirection5:28
Configure folder redirection with group policy in Active Directory to securely redirect each user's data. Explore target folder allocations, removal options, and sign-in implications for different policy sets.
Security settings for redirected folders1:33
Configure manual ntfs and share permission tables on a shared folder to store redirected folders, with folder redirection creating them and setting automatic subfolder permissions.
Demonstration: Configuring Folder Redirection4:17
Configure folder redirection in Active Directory by creating a group policy object that redirects users' documents to a shared folder, set path to a network location, and test with gpupdate.
Managing software with Group Policy9:59
Explore how to manage software lifecycles with Group Policy, including installation, maintenance, upgrades, and removal across users or computers, with advantages, limitations, and deployment options.
Group Policy settings for applying scripts2:08
Use Group Policy to assign scripts to computers or users, control synchronous or asynchronous runs, and store scripts on a shared network location such as the net logon share.
Demonstration: Configuring scripts with GPOs3:51
Create a logon script and link a GPO in the domain to display a message on user logon, then test with gpupdate /force and sign-in verification.

Section Overview3:15
Explore configuring group policy preferences for user settings, including Internet Explorer options and registry, using item-level targeting and map drives, with RSAT on Windows client.
What are Group Policy preferences? Comparing with Policy settings4:06
Explore group policy preferences, a native feature in Windows Server 2008 and newer, with extensions for drive mappings and printers, not enforced by default and can reapply automatically.
Features of Group Policy preferences5:25
Explore how Group Policy preferences configure drive mappings, shortcuts, and other items, using actions like create, delete, replace, and update; apply item-level targeting and common properties to control deployment.
Item-level targeting options4:50
Target group policy preferences with item level targeting to apply settings only when computers or user objects in 27 categories meet criteria. Use and/or logic across categories for precise deployment.
Demonstration: Configuring Group Policy preferences5:56
Demonstrates configuring group policy preferences to deploy a shared printer and a balanced power plan in active directory, targeting an IP range for the printer on Windows 10.
Identity with Windows Server

Requirements

Familiarity with general Windows and Microsoft server administration and technologies

Description

This course is aimed to IT Pros and is supposed to give the viewer the information they need to know to get started with Active Directory (AD DS) and its key concepts. The goal is to provide coverage of AD DS components of advanced AD DS deployments, how to deploy a distributed AD DS environment and· Configure and Manage ADDS User Settings with Group Policy.

The course is targeted to help learning Active Directory and do your job more efficiently.

After completing this course, you will be able to:

Implement administrative Group Policy (GPOs) templates
Configure Folder Redirection, software installation, and scripts
Configure Group Policy preferences
Item-level targeting with Group Policy (GPOs)
And more...

Who this course is for:

Active Directory Administrators
Windows Server Administrators
IT Specialists
Security Specialits

Active Directory: Managing user settings with Group Policy

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Implementing administrative templates8 lectures • 39min

Configuring Folder Redirection, Software Installation, and Scripts8 lectures • 34min

Configuring Group Policy preferences5 lectures • 24min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: