As you’ve learned in this chapter, there are many ways you can customize and optimize the way Group Policy works. If you are looking for specific policy settings or specific values within Group Policy, you can use filters to help make your job easier. Another type of filter, called a security filter, that you can apply to Group Policy is one that changes the way Group Policy is processed with respect to security groups as well as individual computers and users. For example, if you don’t want a policy object to apply to a user whose account is located in an OU, you can filter policy to achieve this.

Also, many factors affect the way policy settings are applied, including inheritance, processing order, and refresh. You can change the way inheritance works by changing the link order and precedence of link objects, overriding inheritance (as long as there is no enforcement), blocking inheritance to prevent inheritance, or enforcing inheritance to supersede other modifications to the way inheritance works. Policy processing and refresh also have major effects on the way policy settings are applied. Not only can you modify policy processing by changing the refresh interval, enabling or disabling GPO processing, and configuring slow link detection, but you can also force background refresh or manually refresh Group Policy.

Finally, to maintain policy and ensure that you can manage it over time, you can perform a number of maintenance procedures. You can model policy for the purposes of planning and tracking Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP). You can copy policy objects within and between domains. You can also back up policy objects and restore them as necessary to recover policy objects if problems occur.