Got non-domain joined machines? Use PolicyPak Cloud to deliver PolicyPak Start Screen and Taskbar settings to them. Couldn’t be easier. Here’s how.

PolicyPak Start Screen & Taskbar Manager: Manage non-domain joined machines using PolicyPak Cloud

In a previous video, you saw me use PolicyPak Start Screen and Taskbar Manager to deliver a particular group to Windows 10 and also set the configuration of the Windows 10 Start Screen. In this video, I’m going to show you how you can export those same settings and get them deployed to your not domain joined machines using PolicyPak Cloud.

To start, we’re going to go back to the Group Policy Object that we used earlier, and we’re simply going to do some exports. I will right click over the “Start Screen Manager” here and “Export Collections as XML” or you can export simply one collection if you have that. I’ll call this “PPSSM-export1.” Then for my Taskbar collection, I’m going to do the same. Right click (on “Taskbar Manager”) and “Export Collections as XML.” I’ll call it “PPTBM-export1.”

So these puppies are just hanging out now on the Desktop ready to go. What I’m going to do next is go into PolicyPak Cloud, and it’s as easy as can be. You can go to a particular group of computers or you can in PolicyPak Cloud link these over to the “All” group.

I’m going to “Upload and link a new XML here.” I will “Browse” for my file that I just exported. Here’s my Start Screen Manager export. I’ll call this “PolicyPak Start Screen 1” and add that guy. Again, because I’m linking it over to the “All” group, every computer will be affected by this as we’ll see in the demonstration.

I will also “Upload and link a new XML here” for the Taskbar Manager right there: “PolicyPak Taskbar Manager 1.” Now these two XML policies are linked to the “All” group. Let’s go over to our endpoint and see it work.

You can see here’s the before picture. I’ve got the multiple items that are just defaulted here in this Windows 10 machine. This machine also has a bunch of applications preinstalled on it as your computers might. Just to prove a point, this computer is not domain joined. It’s in a “Workgroup” that I have called “NOT DOMAIN JOIN.”

What I’m going to do now is install the “PolicyPak Cloud Client.” This has to be installed as an admin one time, and then after that we keep on rolling. So you’ll see me install it one time here. In the background, it’s making contact to PolicyPak Cloud, downloading the client-side extension and then also performing the work for the PolicyPak Start Screen. Now that that’s finished, you can see this computer is a member of the “All” group. We’ll just give this a second to catch up. There we go. We can see we have an icon there.

Exactly what we saw in Group Policy land should occur here in not domain joined land where if we go to the Start Menu, we get “My Important Apps.” We have this in what’s called Full/Replace mode. We’ve wiped out on purpose the other groups that are there. If you wanted to preserve those, that’s possible too.

The Taskbar Manager only kicks in the next time you log off and log back on, so let me go ahead and “Sign out.” Then we’ll just give it a second, and we’ll go ahead and sign back in here. Let’s go ahead and sign in as the “StandardUser” here, and let’s see what happens.

We’re looking for results on the Windows 10 Start Screen and also on the Taskbar. Let’s see if that’s what we get. You can see the Taskbar instantly. We’ve replaced what we have there, and on the Start Menu you can see “My Important Apps.”

You can either launch an application from here right off the Start Menu and also right here off the Taskbar if that’s also something you wanted to do. Just like that, you’ve configured this not domain joined machine to accept your directives with PolicyPak Cloud.

With that in mind, you can join us for a webinar to get started right away and try this out yourself.
Thanks so very much.