Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Matthew Wetmore

William James Whalen

Carey Tanner

William P McDaniel

Provided are support mechanisms for a user interface mechanism that performs group policy management. The support mechanisms include a context menu map that provides a consistent and efficient way to generate interactive context menus for nodes using only straightforward declarations. The declarations are processed to invoke code with corresponding parameters that in turn generates a data structure corresponding to a context menu that is to be displayed. The data structure is processed into another data structure, from which data is extracted to meet the requirements of a hosting management application. An intermediary communications object is provided to separate the user interface into multiple components which each exchange data. A progress dialog is also provided to update the user as to the progress of lengthy operations performed on various managed objects, and to drive those operations. Refresh logic replicates changes made at one location in the user interface to other nodes.

Support mechanisms for improved group policy management user interface

A user interface is disclosed for representing group policy object topology and relationships, while allowing interaction to facilitate group policy management. Forests, sites and domains are hierarchically displayed in a treeview that reflects the network topology. The treeview also represents group policy objects, links, filters and other nodes. Administrators perform operations across forests, domains and sites, and perform operations on other nodes in the treeview. Administrators control which forests, sites and domains are viewable in the treeview, and the treeview state is persisted. Logic automatically reduces the topology's complexity by limiting the presentation of forests and/or domains to only those with which the administrator's forest and domain have a proper trust relationship. Also provided is a tabbed view in a result pane area that provides a rich display of complex data, and intelligent refresh logic to update changes in one user interface area to other user interface areas.

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Matthew Wetmore