Group Policy

Extending the Group Policy Snap-in

Third-party application developers can extend the Group Policy snap-in to provide Group Policy specific to their applications. For this purpose, they can:

Create an administrative template (.adm file). For more information, see Windows 2000 Help.
Create a Group Policy MMC snap-in extension and provide the user interface for setting Group Policy specific to their application. For storing and distributing the policy, the following mechanisms are recommended:
- The easiest is to use the API specific to the Group Policy MMC snap-in to write registry-based Group Policy to the Group Policy template. For more information about writing registry-based Group Policy to the Group Policy template, see the Microsoft Platform SDK link on the Web Resources page at http://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/reskit/webresources.
- Use the GetFileSysPath function to store non-registry-based (file-based) policy information in a Group Policy template subfolder. You should use the <company name>\<application name>\<version> naming convention for this folder. Then place the required files in that Group Policy template subfolder. On the client side, Winlogon calls the client-side extension for the tool. This in turn processes the information stored in the directory in the Group Policy template. The application developer must use this mechanism appropriately. By storing the data in a Group Policy template subfolder, the application capitalizes on the built-in mechanisms of Group Policy (the Group Policy template and Winlogon) for applying special non-registry-based policy. For more information about the GetFile SysPath function, see the SDK link on the Web Resources page at http://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/reskit/webresources.
- You can store data in the Group Policy container. It is strongly recommended to use either the Group Policy container or the Group Policy template, not both.

Client-side Extensions to Group Policy

Most of the Group Policy snap-in extensions also include client-side extensions. These extensions are dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) that are responsible for implementing Group Policy at the client computers.

There are some client-side extensions, such as Disk Quotas, that don't correspond to a snap-in. For more information about the client-side extensions, see "Computer Policy for Client-Side Extensions" later in this chapter.

For information about Microsoft Management Console, see the Microsoft Platform SDK link on the Web Resources page at http://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/reskit/webresources.