Mastering Windows Group Policy

Starter GPOs

In your work with Group Policy so far, you have probably noticed the phrase "Starter GPO". Every time that you click to create a new GPO, one of the options on that screen is to select a Source Starter GPO, but the option is initially grayed out. What is that thing?

Starter GPOs are sort of like GPO templates. You, as the primary Group Policy administrator, have the ability to create these special GPOs, called Starter GPOs, and then when junior-level administrators need to build out a GPO containing settings, they can look through the list of Starter GPOs and select one of these preconfigured policies that you put together. This gives you the ability to hand off the grunt work part of creating policies, while ensuring that the ...