Like most any organization today, you depend on PDF files and like so many applications today, PDF applications are far more advanced than mere PDF readers. They handle fonts, compression, security and so many other facets of today’s PDF documents.
And that means lots of configuration settings, settings that your users can incorrectly modify.
And that is why you need PolicyPak to prevent them from doing so.
At PolicyPak, we enforce and lock down the optimum settings values that you, the administrator, want them to have for PDF Creator. PolicyPak sets and enforces expectations for your users’ applications, so that they get the same experience, every time they launch it.
Keep your PDF Creator configuration settings delivered, enforced and automatically remediated with PolicyPak. Check out this video to see how it’s done:
With PolicyPak, you’re the one in control.
Besides, once you’re using PolicyPak to manage PDF Creator, you’ll also get to manage all your other enterprise desktop applications the same way: Flash, Lync, Java, Firefox, and any custom applications you have. They’re 100% included – absolutely free.
It’s all included when you’re a PolicyPak Professional customer.
PolicyPak was designed by Microsoft MVP, Enterprise Mobility Jeremy Moskowitz – who “wrote the book” on Group Policy, runs GPanswers.com, and lives and breathes Group Policy and enterprise software deployments and desktop lockdown.
When you’re ready to get serious about managing PDF Creator, PolicyPak is ready for you.
Lockdown PDF Creator 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 configure PDF Creator using PolicyPak.
I’ve already got PDF Creator 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.”
I’ll run the application and then go to its Options. We’ll start here in “General” where I have some settings for such things as application updates. Under “Save” and “Auto-save” I have a number of important settings and finally I have a bunch of configuration settings geared around my various file extension types.
PDF Creator is a registry based application which means a registry savvy user can modify these settings and get around your desired settings. I have the registry location saved here where I can go straight into the registry and modify the “UseAutoSave” from 1 to 0. As you can see, eastsalesuser4 has the complete rights to do this.
Now 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 PDF Creator.” 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 PDF Creator” 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.” Like many of the applications PolicyPak supports, you have the ability to make sure that you, the network administrator, control the ability to manage application updates, not your users. For that reason, I’m going to set my “Update interval” to Never. While I’m on this page I will check “No processing at startup.” If you’ve noticed, as I have been setting these configuration values the text for these settings became underlined. This means that these setting values will be delivered by PolicyPak. Let’s go to “Save” next and make sure that PDF is the Standard save format. Then let’s go to “Auto-Save” and let’s make sure that “Use Auto-save” is always checked. Now to ensure that users like eastsalesuser4 can’t modify this setting within the registry anymore, I’m going to right click on the setting itself and select “Perform ACL Lockdown” which will literally lock this setting down within the registry itself. While I’m at it, I will make sure that PDF is the enforced “Auto-save format”
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.
Remember: Its PolicyPak performs the magic. To get the magic delivered, you can use Group Policy, SCCM, LanDesk, KACE or your own systems management software. Even if the user is offline, your settings are always preserved because PolicyPak is always working for you in the background, making sure what you set is what they get.
Now let’s open up PDF Creator again and check our settings. Notice that the “Update Interval” is now set to Never and that “No processing at startup” is now checked as well. If I move to the Save tab I now have PDF as the default Save format and we see the same thing in Auto-Save as well.
Now let’s pretend this user tries to change the settings in the registry once again. I’ll open up the registry location again to alter the “UseAutosave” setting and as you can see the efforts of this user has been thwarted. PolicyPak with ACL Lockdown has locked down these registry settings.
And we are done. That is how incredibly easy it is for you to use PolicyPak to manage PDF Creator as well 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.
