The GPOGUY-- Group Policy Blog

I had an opportuntiy to attend this week's Directory Expert's Conference, put on by Netpro. I'm told that this year's conference was the biggest ever, at nearly 800 people. If you go to only one AD related conference in a year, this is the one to attend. Its got a lot of smart folks in one place giving sessions on all things related to AD & Microsoft's Identity products. Its a cool show. I got a chance to speak on Group Policy on Monday (and sadly could only stay one day at the conference). My session was generally well attended. I got to talk on GP Troubleshooting and even got a chance to show a sneak peak of an upcoming SDM Software product that I call the GP SDK. Essentially the SDK is going to provide a way of scripting Group Policy settings--something you can't do today--using PowerShell (or other interfaces). Look for the SDK to be released in the near future.

In addition to speaking, I got a chance to see all my old pals in the AD world, like Dean Wells, Joe Richards and Sean Deuby. Sean and his buddy Adam--both AD & Identity gods at Intel--came down to my room to meet up for dinner and were shocked, as was I, to see that I had gotten a suite at the Red Rocks Resort. Pretty cool. This room was over the top. Sean took some pictures that I will try to post if he sends them to me.

Technorati Tags:

Group Policy Active Directory NetPro 

Posted by gpoguy at 08:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Since I've been blogging fairly regularly about the problems using GP to deploy Office 2007, and in fact even wrote about it in this month's Windows IT Pro Magazine, it was no surprise that I heard recently from my good friends at Special Operations Software. They reminded me that if you really want to use Group Policy to deploy Office 2007 (or any application for that matter) in a robust way, that you should check out their SpecOps Deploy product. I saw this demo'd at the Microsoft Management Summit recently and it was very cool. Its what Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) should have been!

Technorati Tags:

Group Policy, Office 2007, Software Installation

Posted by gpoguy at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, SDM Software has shipped the update to the popular GPExpert Health Reporter tool. This tool provides some great troubleshooting features for ensuring Group Policy is healthy on a given Windows system. The tool now supports installation on Windows Vista and also sports some new features such as the ability to connect to a remote system with alternate credentials, a new Summary View, improved reporting and the ability to browse a domain for computers to connect to. Check it out! You can download a free 10-day trial at http://www.sdmsoftware.com/products.php.

Posted by gpoguy at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While there hasn't been much in the way of updates since my previous blog entry on the challenges of deploying Office 2007, one thing has happened, and that is that MS has re-published their previously yanked article on how to implement this. You can now find it here:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/efd0ee45-9605-42d3-9798-3b698fff3e081033.mspx?mfr=true

Posted by gpoguy at 06:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I just blogged about a little GP PowerShell cmdlet that I wrote recently to retrieve GPO information. I also mentioned that I created a Quest PowerGUI snap-in for it. Well it turns out Quest has a weekly drawing for the best cmdlet and I just won $200 for my little cmdlet. Cool! Check it out here: http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/200-for-gpo-management/

 Anyway, a nice little perk

Posted by gpoguy at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)