Let's jump right in and import one of these files to give us some new settings inside Group Policy! One of the things I commonly do in this area is import settings from Microsoft for a tool called the DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant (DCA). This is a piece of software that Microsoft developed, but one for which they do not have settings built into Group Policy out of the box. Instead of configuring the DCA tool individually on each workstation, Microsoft provides an ADMX file available for download that allows the configurable settings to be injected into Group Policy. From there, we can easily pump these settings into a GPO, and roll them out to everyone that way.

For the moment, we are going to continue focusing on our existing test lab environment, which is composed of a single Domain Controller. This means that all Active Directory files are stored locally on that server. The process for working with ADMX files changes slightly when inside a domain with multiple DCs, but starting here will be good background information to better understand this process.