How to generate and export group policy settings report
You can generate and export group policy settings using native tools such as Windows PowerShell and ADManager Plus. The following is a comparison between obtaining an AD group policy settings report with Windows PowerShell and ADManager Plus.
Windows PowerShell
Steps to obtain group policy settings using PowerShell:
- Identify the domain from which you want to retrieve the report.
- Identify the LDAP attributes you need in group policy settings retrieval.
- Identify the primary DC to fetch the GPO report.
- Compile the script
- Execute it in Windows PowerShell.
- The report will be exported in the given format.
- To obtain the report in a different format, modify the script accordingly to the needs of the user.
Sample Windows PowerShell script:
Copied
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
Import-Module GroupPolicy
$dc = Get-ADDomainController
-Discover -Service PrimaryDC
Get-GPOReport -All -Domain mse1.com
-Server $dc.Name -ReportType HTML
-Path C:\Scripts\GPOReportsAll.html
Click to copy entire script
ADManager Plus
To obtain the report,
- Select 'All GPOs and Linked AD objects' from GPO Reports .
- Select the desired domain, and click Generate.
- Select 'Export as' to export the report in any of the desired formats (CSV, PDF, HTML, CSVDE and XLSX)
Screenshot
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Following are the limitations to obtain a report on group policy settings using native tools like Windows PowerShell.
- To export Group policy settings using PowerShell, the script requires commands to identify the primary DC to obtain the GPO report.
- This script could be run only from the computers which has Active Directory Domain Services role.
- In every instance of PowerShell commands being run, the data is retrieved from the AD whereas ADManager Plus populates the values to database instead of the DC to retrieve the report.
- Other formats of reports such as PDF/CSV/XLSX cannot be obtained with the help of this script.
- Complexity in generating reports based on enabled/disabled GPOs
In contrast, to export Group Policy settings using ADManager Plus, we can simply generate the pre-defined report by selecting 'All GPOs and Linked AD objects' feature and choose any of the available formats to export the report in a simple, intuitively designed UI .
