This article is for system administrators who are interested in using Group Policy to deploy & configure Draftable Desktop across an organization as part of an enterprise deployment.
What is Group Policy?
Group Policy is a feature in Microsoft Windows that provides centralized management and configuration of operating systems, applications, and users' settings in an Active Directory environment. This is particularly useful in enterprise settings, where maintaining uniform configurations across multiple machines is critical.
Obtaining the administrative templates
The administrative templates are found in the GroupPolicy folder under the product installation path.
For the Default Installer or Per-User MSI, the path will also contain a version number. The latest administrative templates will be in the folder with the latest version.
Example path for Default Installer or Per-User MSI:
%LocalAppData%\DraftableDesktop\app-2.4.5500\GroupPolicy
Installing the administrative templates
To install the templates, copy all files/folders in the GroupPolicy folder to the following location on the system(s) from which Group Policy will be managed:
C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions
You could perform the following alternate methods of installing administrative templates, by either:
- If your organization maintains a Central Store, copy the administrative templates to the
Central Store’s network path. - Import custom and third party partner ADMX templates using Microsoft Intune.
Editing the policies in the Group Policy editor
Once the administrative templates are installed, the Draftable Desktop policies can be found in Group
Policy editor under:
- Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Draftable
- User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Draftable
Some settings may only be listed under one of the two scopes if they’re not supported on the other.
Policy settings
These are the policy settings that can be set via Group Policy:
- Header and footer detection: An experimental feature for the detection of headers and footers in documents. When enabled, the product key must be also entered as part of the policy setting.
- Configure product key: Add the product key to be used for automatic license activation.
- Send usage statistics: When enabled, statistics on user machines are sent to Draftable servers for diagnostic purposes.
- Configure submission of exception reports: Assists Draftable in identifying issues and improving the product. When enabled, the administrator has 2 additional options: Always send exceptions or never send exceptions.
- Accept terms and conditions on behalf of users: Users are prompted to accept the terms and conditions on first-time application start. When enabled this will automatically accept said terms and conditions.
Priority of Group Policy settings
Unless otherwise noted, the order of precedence from highest priority to lowest priority is:
- User Policy (set in User Configuration)
- Computer Policy (set in Computer Configuration)
- User Setting (set by the user through the UI or by the user manually editing the registry)
If no policy setting exists, the user setting is used.
Using Microsoft Intune
Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service provided by Microsoft that helps organizations manage and secure their devices, applications, and data.
If you are using Microsoft Intune, you can use it to install Group Policy for Draftable Desktop. Follow the Microsoft documentation for more information.