Microsoft® Windows® Group Policy Guide

Understanding Group Policy

Group Policy provides a convenient and effective way to manage computer and user settings.

What It Does

With Group Policy, you can manage settings for thousands of users or computers in the same way that you manage settings for one user or computer—and without ever leaving your desk. To do this, you use one of several management tools to change a setting to a desired value, and this change is applied throughout the network to a desired subset of users or computers or to any individual user or computer.

One way to think of Group Policy is as a set of rules that you can apply to help you manage users and computers. Despite common misperceptions, Group Policy does this in a way that is more intuitive than was previously possible. ...