AndiBellstedt/PSGPPreferences

A way to manage Group Policy Preferences through PowerShell

PSGPPreferences - a native PowerShell way to manage Group Policy Preferences (formerly PolicyMaker)

The goal of this rather ambitious project is to provide full Group Policy Preferences experience in a command-line interface. Currentlly, Microsoft gives us only cmdlets for the Registry section of GPP, which is clearly not enough.

For more information see:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012/dn789194(v=ws.11)
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/dn581922(v=ws.11)
• https://web.archive.org/web/20060323144551/http://www.desktopstandard.com/pdf/pmsemanual.pdf

(Yep, all publicly available official documentation for this functionality is retired)

The most important part of GPP for me is "Local Users and Groups", that's why I started with it.

This module is a very much work in progress — expect breaking changes ahead. Your help is welcome and appreciated.

Installation

Install-Module PSGPPreferences

What already works

• The "Local Users and Groups" section:
  • You can create new groups and their members (New-GPPGroup, New-GPPGroupMember),
  • retrieve groups and their members (Get-GPPGroup, Get-GPPGroupMember),
  • remove existing groups (Remove-GPPGroup),
  • add/remove members to/from groups (Add-GPPGroupMember, Remove-GPPGroupMember),
  • set group and member properties (Set-GPPGroup, Set-GPPGroupMember).
  • create new users (New-GPPUser),
  • retrieve users (Get-GPPUser),
  • remove existing users (Remove-GPPUser),
  • set user properties (Set-GPPUser).

What does not work, yet

• Other GPP sections
• Filters
• User context. Only the Machine context is supported right now
  • I expect implementing this feature to be a breaking change.
• Ordering
• Cross-domain editing
  • Currently you can work only with group policies from your workstation's domain.

Roadmap

1. [DONE] Add Users support (Local Users and Groups" section)
2. [IN PROGRESS] Tests for Users.
3. Printers
4. Support for changing the following properties:
   • [bool]$removePolicy
   • [bool]$bypassErrors
5. Support for disabling whole sections
6. More tests
7. Devices
8. User context (v.1.0)
9. Services (v.1.0)
10. Filters (v.1.1)
    • At least some
11. Files (v.1.2)
12. Folders
13. Ordering
14. Environment
15. Ini Files
16. Data Sources
17. Shortcuts
18. Network Shares
19. Everything else

What will NOT be implemented in the foreseeable future

• Filters: MSI, Registry (They are too complicated)
• Sections: Registry (Windows already has built-in cmdlets for that)