• Horde Group Policy Objects

(or perhaps some other name, as Microsoft may have a copyright on that term)

The idea of Horde Group Policy Objects (HGPO) is to implement a replacement for the current prefs system, modeled after how Group Policy Objects work in a Microsoft Active Directory. Including a nice administrative GUI, meaning no more editing prefs.php files, and happier admins :)

++ Visualization of a HGPO

• The list of apps would be pulled from the registry

• each app would have a prefs.xml file defining what prefs are available.

• bundle the GPO and specify a target. A target can consist of:

• entire horde installation

• horde group

• individual user

• guest user

• OU if using LDAP backend

++ What would need to be done

• build a HGPO manager to list, create, edit, delete, etc. HGPO's

• Store HGPO in DB table(s)

• horde_gpo table?

• possible extend the datatree

• would (Rampage|RDO) apply?

Possible DB schema, extending existing prefs schema:

horde_prefs table: {{pref_uid, pref_scope, pref_name, pref_value, HGPO}}

• If pref_uid is set, the pref is a user pref

• if HGPO is set, it is a HGPO pref

• what happens if both are set?

horde_gpo table: {{HGPO_ID, HGPO_name, HGPO_target, HGPO_target_type, HGPO_override_user_settings}}

• link horde_gpo::HGPO_ID to horde_prefs::HGPO to get a list of prefs belonging to a given HGPO.

++ Other Thoughts

• all $pref->getValue() calls could be handled on the backend by a HGPO manager, giving us a drop-in replacement.

• we'd need a way to clearly define what happens if two HGPO's have overlapping, conflicting settings.

++ Links

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/msit/security/grppolobjectmgmt.mspx - gives a good overview on how MS GPO's work, and a nice graphic that really helped me visualize the internal workings.