Microsoft delayed the Microsoft Virtual Academy event Preparing your Enterprise for Windows 10 as a Service to next week. One of the ways to prepare your enterprise for Windows 10 is to configure the new Group Policy settings.
RSAT & ADMX Central Store
While it still might be a few weeks out for the Windows 10 RSAT to be available, you can review the Windows 10 Group Policies from Microsoft resources and copy them to your Central Store.
@HuntHenning @maryjofoley Still a couple of weeks for the updated RSAT tools
— Michael Niehaus (@mniehaus) July 30, 2015
By copying the new templates from Windows 10 to your Central Store, you can configure the Windows 10 policies from a Windows 7/8.1 computer. This also helps accommodate the delay of the Windows 10 Remote Server Administration Tools.
Copy the files from a Windows 10 computer’s C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions to a folder called PolicyDefinitions in \\FQDN\SYSVOL\FQDN\policies. You can also find the templates available for download from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48257
DeliveryOptimization.admx
fileservervssagent.admx
gamedvr.admx
grouppolicypreferences.admx
grouppolicy-server.admx
mmcsnapins2.admx
terminalserver-server.admx
textinput.admx
userdatabackup.admx
windowsserver.admx
Windows 10 ADMX Spreadsheet
To review the available Group Policies, Microsoft provides the Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows and Windows Server from their Download Center. A new spreadsheet titled Windows 10 ADMX Spreadsheet.xlsx has been provided which provides every setting relevant to Windows 10 with the name of the setting, the path to find it, and the help text explaining the setting.
The spreadsheet allows you to sort and filter the spreadsheet by different column values such as Machine or User-based settings, the ADMX file name, supported OS versions, and whether it is new in Windows 10.
Group Policy Search
The Group Policy Search site on Azure has also been updated for Windows 10. It is available at http://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/
Windows 10 Group Policy on Channel 9
The last tidbit to share is this event from the Microsoft Ignite Conference that took place in Chicago earlier this Summer. ‘Managing Windows 10 using Group Policy with In the Box , Microsoft and 3rd Party Tools’ was a session by Jeremy Moskowitz (the same author as this book I previously reviewed) and Darren Mar-Elia, a Group Policy MVP.
You can find the session at https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3304
Windows 10 adds new features and settings that can be managed using Group Policy, while also carrying forward improvements from Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 that those still on Windows 7 haven’t yet experienced. In this session, we review the new settings available, as well as the broader improvements in the Group Policy engine, that you’ll see in Windows 10. We also look at upcoming improvements in Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM).