Lockdown Sketchup with Group Policy video transcript

Hi, this is Jeremy Moskowitz, Microsoft MVP, Enterprise Mobility and Founder of PolicyPak Software.  In this video, we’re going to learn how to manage and lockdown Google Sketchup using PolicyPak.

I’ve already got Sketchup installed on my computer, and I’m just a regular user here.  As you can see, I’m logged on as a guy called “eastsalesuser4.”  If we open up this application from the start menu and go to “Preferences” we see a number of settings here for us to configure.  I’ll go to “General” where there are some key settings such as “Create Backup” and “Auto Save” which if set up correctly would be very beneficial to my users.  Like with many with applications, I don’t want my users managing the updates so I definitely want to turn off “Automatically Check for updates.”  This application has some hardware specific settings as well such as mouse settings under “Drawings” and hardware acceleration settings under “OpenGL.”

Let’s see how we can ensure compliance and perform desktop management of settings quickly using PolicyPak.  I’ll go ahead and switch over to my Management Station computer.

We’ll go ahead and right click over our “East Sales Users”, “Create a GPO” and we’re going to call it “Lockdown Google Sketchup.”  So this GPO is now associated with the “East Sales Users.” I’ll right click over it.  I’ll click “Edit…” I’ll dive down under “User Configuration,” “PolicyPak/Applications/New/Application.” There it is, “PolicyPak for Sketchup” along with other applications like “Java,” “Flash” “Firefox,” “Skype” and lots of other important desktop applications that your users utilize every day (and you want to make more secure).

Let’s start with “General” and let’s make sure that “Automatically check for Updates” is always unchecked.  Notice how as soon as I changed the checkbox value that setting became underlined.  That means that the setting value is going to be delivered by PolicyPak.  Now to make sure that my users never try and reverse this setting I am going to right click on it and select “Disable corresponding control in target application.”  While I’m here let’s enable “Auto-save” which if I right click and select “Perform ACL Lockdown”  will ensure that my users aren’t able to modify this setting in any way even through the registry.  Now let’s go to “Drawing.” We want our users to have a predictive experience each time they use the mouse so make sure that “Auto-detect” is always enforced.  This time I’m going to right click on the setting and select “Hide corresponding control in target application” so that my users don’t even know this setting exists.

Now I will go back to my client machine, we’ll get a command prompt and run “gpupdate.”  Now you could envision the user logging on for the very first time, using a Terminal Services or Citrix machine, using a VDI session, changing job roles, or getting a new computer.   I just happen to be using gpupdate.

Now that that’s done, let’s go ahead and reopen the application.  We can see that our desired preference settings for “General” have been delivered and are greyed out so that my users cannot manipulate them in the slightest.  Even more impressive, under “Drawing” we can’t even see the setting for the mouse as it is completely hidden from users.  PolicyPak is doing its job.

Now let’s pretend that this user is registry savvy and attempts to modify the setting through the registry.  I have saved the registry location of this setting and as you see here if I try to modify the Auto-Save settings, PolicyPak ACL Lockdown even thwarts the best efforts of this user within the registry itself.

And we are done.  That is how incredibly easy it is for you to use PolicyPak to manage and lockdown Google Sketchup as tons of other desktop applications.

If you’re looking for a trial of PolicyPak, just click on the “Webinar / Download” button on the right.

Thanks so much for watching, and get in touch with us if you’re looking to get started. Talk to you soon.