What was that GPO setting?

There is a GPO setting for, literally, almost everything in Windows!

Software companies provide all of these settings to administrators by means of Group Policy Administrative Templates, better known as ADMX templates or ADMX files. The domain admin imports these ADMX files, into their Active Directory schema, and can then manage an array of settings for the software related to the imported ADMX template.

You can usually find these files on your software vendor’s website, or try doing a search for your software along with the term ” ADMX”. The files or templates consist of two parts; (1) ADMX file – this half are the settings that it allows you to set, and (2) ADML file – the is the language localization file and will have the same name as the ADMX file it is associated with.

While these ADMX templetes allow for an amazing level of control and standardization within a domain or corporate environment, it can be pretty intimidating trying to comb through all of the available settings to find the one thing you want to tweak. It’s akin to trying to find a needle in a hay stack.

Luckily we live in the age of the Internet. There are a couple of websites that I like to use, that have made the task of finding particular GPO settings incredibly simple. Since I’m starting off with Microsoft – Think of it as “Bing’ but just for GPOs & ADMXs. As i mentioned, the first one is “powered” by Microsoft themselves. I feel that it does a great job of simplifying the task of searching for the right GPO setting you want.

Group Policy Search – https://gpsearch.azurewebsites.net/

The other site that I like to use is not Microsoft specific, but compiles and lists the configurable settings available from many software vendors (I stopped counting after I got to 50 different venders).

If the software you use has an available ADMX template, there is pretty darn good chance that it’s settings will be listed on the site below.

GetADMX – https://getadmx.com/