Exam Objectives in this Chapter:

Introduction

Group Policy in Windows Server 2003 is a very useful tool. As with Active Directory, we must be able to manage Group Policies and troubleshoot them when problems arise. Distributing applications through Group Policy is a wonderful feature and cuts down on the amount of time you will have to spend at an end user's desk; however, it isn't always the easiest thing to implement. Likewise with security settings that are implemented through Group Policy they are a helpful feature but can cause unexpected side effects when they are rolled out to the user community.

In Chapter 6, you learned to how plan and configure a Group Policy strategy. You used tools such as the Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) to plan and create your Group Policies. In this chapter, we use the RSoP tool and others to manage these policies once they have been put into place. You will learn how to manage these Group Policies for changes, but you will also learn how to troubleshoot a Group Policy that is ineffective or is not working properly once deployed.

Let's begin the topic of Group Policy management with a discussion of how you, the administrator, can change and build on Group Policies that have already been implemented.