If you're blocking a desktop or UWP application, you can now choose to display a standard blocked message, a custom message, or just block the application silently with no message at all!

Hi, this is Whitney with PolicyPak Software. In this video we are going to talk about the ability to create custom messages when you choose to deny a particular application. This works with UWP applications when you deny those or when you deny specific desktop applications. You can do that. Right now as of the recording of this video, this does not apply to things that are blocked with secure run. It only refers to things that you specifically choose to block.

Right now I have created a GPO where we deny UWP applications. I have attempted to run a UWP application on my endpoint. Right now this is just a standard Windows 10 block message. You have the option to leave it there, but if you want to put something more specific, you can absolutely do that.

Let me come back over to my management station here. I’ll grab this GPO. I’ve created a rule where I deny all UWP apps. What I’m going to do is when I chose to deny, I had the option to choose how I wanted to have that fact announced on my endpoints. Right now I’m at the default message.

I have the option though to do this silently so there’s no message at all or with a customized message. Let’s go over here and do this. We’ll say all UWP applications are denied by company policy. You could put a phone number on there if you have someone needing to call the help desk or something like that. It’s up to you, of course.

Then I’m going to save this, hop over here. I’ll run a GP Update. Then we’ll see the new custom message show up in place of that standard Windows 10 block message. Let’s come over here and try to run the store. We, of course, got blocked, but we also got the custom message. There we go. Now we know all UWP applications are denied by company policy.

Your other option is to have it run silently. I’m going to edit this rule and we’re going to deny settings. We’re going to choose without a message, so we can save that. Then come back over here. We’ll run a GP Update one more time.

Then we’ll see it just blocking the application without throwing any sort of message or prompt. Let’s come back over here and try to run the Microsoft Store. It just didn’t run. It did that silently.

That is usually a good idea if you are having someone run a program that may try to update itself where it might throw a block message even though the user didn’t click on anything. You may have something run silently so that people don’t get hit with messages they didn’t click on, so that’s that. I hope this video helps you out. Thanks so much.