Feature
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Description
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Integrated MMC Snap-In
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The Microsoft Management Console (MMC) provides a Group Policy-centric view of an enterprise with administrative features integrated cleanly for increased ease of use. The MMC’s user interface describes GPOs and associated links in a more intuitive manner and integrates with an updated Group Policy Object Editor.
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GPMC Reporting
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A rich HTML-based reporting environment for GPOs and their policy settings is included in GPMC.
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Group Policy Results and Modeling
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GPMC exposes Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) data. First introduced in Windows XP, RSoP makes it easy for an administrator to determine the resulting set of policies for a given user or computer in both an actual and a what-if scenario. In GPMC, Group Policy Results displays the result of a query made directly against a computer/user. Group Policy Modeling enables what-if simulation of user/computer scenarios and can be an important tool when planning changes to a Group Policy implementation. Group Policy Modeling must be performed against a Windows Server 2003 domain controller.
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Support for Backup, Staging, and Testing Group Policy Objects
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GPMC includes backup and restore options for GPOs. Using this feature, administrators can maintain GPO templates—versions of GPOs for different configurations, such as highly managed desktops, laptops, Terminal Services on Windows Server 2003, Exchange Servers, and so on. New support for backup, copying, and importing GPOs lets administrators deploy configurations rapidly throughout an organization as needed, including between test and production environments and across forests..
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Enhanced User Interface in the Group Policy Object Editor
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Policy settings are more easily understood, managed, and verified with Web-view integration in the Group Policy Object Editor. Clicking a policy displays text that explains its function and supported operating systems (the latter through a new Supported On tag).
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Scriptable Interfaces
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Operations such as backup, restore, import, copy, and reporting of GPOs are fully scriptable, which lets administrators customize and automate management. Note that it is not possible to programmatically set individual policy settings within a GPO.
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Support for Cross-forest Trusts
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Administrators can manage Group Policy for multiple domains and sites within a given forest, all in a simplified user interface with drag-and-drop support. And with cross-forest trust, administrators can manage Group Policy across multiple forests from the same console.
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