Merging and Reducing Existing GPOs

Netwrix Endpoint Policy Manager (formerly PolicyPak) ships with the Endpoint Policy Manager Group Policy Merge Utility. It is designed to help you take advantage of the Endpoint Policy Manager Admin Templates Manager, as well as combine multiple collections within one single GPO. Many users want a way to reduce the number of GPOs they have, and the Endpoint Policy Manager Group Policy Merge Utility allows you to do just that. Identify the source GPOs that contain Microsoft ADM/ADMX settings (known as REG.POL settings), and then specify a target GPO, to create a collection.

NOTE: See the Reduce GPOs (and/or export them for use with Endpoint Policy Manager Cloud or with MDM) topic for more information.

A secondary use for the Endpoint Policy Manager Group Policy Merge Utility is to merge multiple GPOs into theEndpoint Policy Manager Admin Templates Manager format, and then export the collection for use with Endpoint Policy Manager Cloud or an MDM service. This way, you can take a set of real Group Policy settings and export them quickly and easily into one export file, which is uploaded into Endpoint Policy Manager Cloud or an MDM service for use later.

To run the tool, locate the downloadable ISO file in the Endpoint Policy Manager Extras folder, as seen below.

Currently, the Endpoint Policy Manager Group Policy Merge Tool can only migrate GPOs containing ADM/ADMX (REG.POL) items. In the future, more formats will be available for other scenarios.