NetSupport Manager integration with Active Directory

NetSupport integrates with Microsoft’s Active Directory structure, enabling you to centrally manage Client and Control configurations. By creating an appropriate Group Policy, you can apply standardised Client configurations to Client machines without the need to visit individual desktops.

To make the task a little easier NetSupport supplies ready-made Administrative Templates containing the configurable options. When you install NetSupport Manager the Template files are copied to the NetSupport Manager program folder.

To apply configuration changes via Active Directory

1. At the domain controller, run Group Policy Management.
2. Select the desired policy to apply the NetSupport settings to or create a new policy.
3. Right click the policy and select Edit.
4. The NetSupport Manager templates will be located under:
   Computer Policies – Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates
   User Policies – User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates
   The templates are called NetSupport Client Settings and NetSupport Manager Control Settings.
5. Within these templates, you will find the relevant NetSupport Manager settings that can be applied via Group Policy.

By default, each NetSupport policy option is set to not configured.

Each time you make a change to an option, the Group Policy refresh interval will determine when it is applied to Client machines. If a remote control session is not currently active, the Client will detect any changes to its own Administrative Template and restart, applying the new settings. If a remote control session is open, the Client will restart at the next available opportunity.

Note: To enable certain configurations at the Client or Control using the NetSupport ADMX Template files, you are required to enter an encrypted value, for example, the Client security key policy requires an encrypted security key to be entered. When configuring this through the ADMX Template file, you cannot enter the security key in plain text this would not be recognised by the Client, so you have to enter the encrypted security key value into the policy.

To generate the encrypted values, NetSupport has created a utility called the NetSupport Encryption utility. For further information on how to use and obtain the NetSupport Encryption utility, click here