1.6 Defining and Locking Down Device Configuration Settings

Through the use of policies, you can control and lock down the configuration settings for the following applications:

Additionally, you can create policies that run applications on a device, or perform modifications to a text-based configuration file using regular expressions.

You can apply individual policies to devices. You can also add policies to policy groups and apply the policy groups to devices.

Some policies are singular, meaning that only one instance of the policy can apply to the device. Other policies are plural, meaning that multiple instances can apply. Because a device inherits policy assignments from any groups or folders in which it is a member, conflicting assignments can occur. In this case, ZENworks determines the effective policies by first applying any device-assigned policies, then any group-assigned policies, and then any folder-assigned policies.

You can define the schedule for policies. The schedule determines when a policy is applied to a device.

To create a policy:

  1. In the ZENworks Control Center, click the Policies tab.

  2. In the Policies list, click New > Policy to display the Create New Policy Wizard.

  3. Follow the prompts to create the policy and assign it to devices. For information about what you need to supply at each step of the wizard, click the Help Question Mark icon.

    When assigning the policy to devices, you can lessen your management overhead by assigning the policy to groups of devices rather than to individual devices. For more information about device groups, see Section 1.1, Organizing Devices: Folders and Groups.

For more detailed information about using policies and policy groups to control and lock down device settings, see Section IV, Policy Management.