Quick news: Windows 7 add-in for Windows Small Business Server

From Charlie Russel, Microsoft Press author:

The Official SBS Blog is reporting that they’ve finished the “Windows 7 Professional Pack for Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials Add-In”. (Whew! Gotta love those snappy titles we get these days!) This is also known as the “GPO Plug-in," for those of us who’ve played with it a bit. The download was available as of August 12th.

The goal of the Add-In is to allow you to easily set group policies for clients on your Small Business Server Essentials network, including security settings, folder redirection, automatic updates and others. Of course, these GPOs won’t work with non-Windows clients, nor will they work with Home editions of Windows, since these clients aren’t actually joined to the SBS Essentials domain.  Yet another reason I strongly believe that businesses need to be running a business edition of Windows.

If you’re running Windows SBS Essentials, I think you’ll find this Add-In a useful addition. It doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do manually yourself, but it sure makes it a lot easier to do it! And we have a whole section on Group Policies in our Working with Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials book.