Hey PowerShell and Group Policy Fans!
If you want to script group policy changes, life just got easier! I’m pleased to announce that today we shipped a major upgrade to our GP Automation Engine product–version 3.0. For those of you who don’t know what the GPAE is all about, a little background:
Back in 2007, the GPAE was the 2nd product SDM Software shipped. It was and still is the only product on the market that allows you to script Group Policy settings from either PowerShell or .Net. It was and still is extremely powerful for folks who need to make mass changes to GPO settings, to script Group Policy changes or who simply want to provide an alternative interface to GP editing, beyond the good old (clunky) GP Editor MMC snap-in.
In the 3.0 version, we’ve made several big improvements, including:
- New PowerShell Script Cmdlet Module (SDM-GPAEScript) adds 17 new cmdlets to simplify GP management through PowerShell
- Added support for use on all versions of Windows including Windows 8.1 and Server 2012-R2 and PowerShell, v4
- Added support for GP Preferences Internet Settings up to and including IE 10/11
- Added support for read and writing Security Options on the local GPO
- Added support for additional Security Options settings, such as UAC
- Numerous upgrades on Administrative Template parsing including added support for multi-valued Listboxes (e.g. Site-to-zone assignment)
- GPAE no longer requires running as administrator
I’m particularly excited about the new script cmdlet module we’re providing. This was built in conjunction with PowerShell MVP Jeff Hicks, and it’s designed to help simplify getting access to the various different settings areas within GP. Jeff has built a set of core cmdlets that let you get easy access to GPOs, containers and settings, regardless of policy area, and then leverages those to build some Get- and Set- functions for different policy areas. These new cmdlets make reading and writing GPO settings across different policy areas a snap. And we plan to add to the script module over time with more and more Get- and Set- functions.
In addition, in this release we added support for the latest and greatest versions of Windows (8.1/2012-R2 and PowerShell v4). We also brought our GP Preferences Internet Settings support into the modern era with included support for reading/writing up to IE 10/11 settings.
So if you haven’t checked out GPAE before, I encourage to visit the GPAE product page and register for the trial version!
Darren