Resource Application Block Group Policy

New to the Enterprise Library 3.1 is an interface to Active Directory Group Policy Management. The Resource Application Block has implemented this Manageability feature for resource managers.

With these manageability features you can define a special policy for Resource Managers and set WMI Filters. With a group policy you can prevent users from changing their local Resource Application Block configuration settings, alternatively you might have several desktop applications deployed throughout your organisation and need to change a resource store across the board.

Configuring your applications to use Group Policy requires the use of the Manageable ConfigurationSource this determines what appears in your policy by providing an ADM Template generator. Configure the Manageable ConfigurationSource first then click on Generate ADM Template from the Manageable ConfigurationSource context menu. Whatever you have configured in the Console will be turned into a template that you can use in the Group Policy Management tool. In the case of the Resource Application Block the ADM template will include all of the configured Resource Managers and associated resource provider types and their properties. See the documentation that comes with the Enterprise Library 3.1 for more details.

Generating an ADM Template

Creating a Resource Application Block Group Policy

Carry out the following steps to create a Resource Application Block Group Policy: Adding a Resource Application Block Group Policy
Adding an ADM Template
Selecting an ADM Template

You end up with additional entries in the Application branch. The Resource Application Block manageability interface will add Resource entries to mirror all of the configurable properties required for the Resource Application Block

New Application Entries in Group Policy

Editing the Resource Application Block Group Policy

Now that you have added your ADM template to the Group Policy you can edit the settings. These are, of course, the same settings as you configure using the Enterprise Library Configuration Console only now you are using the Group Policy editor.

To edit those settings you perform the following steps: Resource Manager Configurable Settings Group Policy Configuration Editor

Now all computers (or users) in the domain that hosts the policy will have their Resource Application Block configuration automatically modified for any resource manager instance names that match the ones in the group policy template.