This last week, we (SDM Software) released a new version of GPO Compare and a brand new product in GPO Exporter. Why are these significant? Well, first off, GPO Compare now provides full support for all GP settings that were included in Win7 and Server 2008-R2, including GP Preferences. It also includes the ability to compare live GPOs to GPO backups (or any combination therein). And, it provides the ability to view those differences either in a tree view that looks much like GPO Editor, or in a grid view. You can also search for settings within the difference reports by keyword. Perhaps as exciting for you scripting junkies, both GPO Compare and GPO Exporter provides PowerShell cmdlets that let you perform comparisons or GPO exports from the command-line. Cool! So, what is GPO Exporter? Well, as the name implies, its a tool for letting you export settings from your GPOs. Think of it as part documentation/inventory tool and part real-time GP search tool. You can use the Exporter to dump all of the settings across all of your GPOs into a big list. Then you can search and sort that list to discover interesting things like redundant settings across GPOs, particular settings that you might be looking for but aren’t sure which GPO they reside in, etc. The Exporter also lets you dump GPO settings that you select to CSV file. This is kinda cool because if you are trying to consolidate your GPOs down to a smaller number, you can essentially pick settings out using GPO Exporter, export them to CSV, and use those as input for new GPO creation by leveraging our Group Policy Automation Engine (GPAE). Double-cool. So, check out these two new/updated products on our website and let me know what you think!
Darren