Novell ZENworks Desktop Management
Policy-Driven Automation
Distribute applications, operating systems and environments to the right people from a single location. You can leverage the powerful capabilities of the policies and profiles in Novell ZENworks® Desktop Management to automatically deploy operating systems, configurations, and software on thousands of desktops and laptops—all from a single location.
About Policies
A policy is a set of rules that defines how workstations, users, and servers can be configured and controlled, including application availability and access, file access, and the appearance and contents of individual desktops. Policies are contained within policy packages, where they are also administered and customized. ZENworks Desktop Management allows automated, policy-based management of server, user and workstation configurations, processes and behaviors. For example, you could define a user policy that determines how a certain user's desktop looks, regardless of the machine that user logs in to. Or, you could set up a workstation policy that determines how a certain machine's desktop looks, regardless of which user logs in.
You can use policies to define the following:
- Parameters for importing workstation objects to the tree
- How far in the tree to search for effective policies
- Parameters for collecting hardware and software inventory
- Parameters for remotely controlling a workstation
- Event and action scheduling
Some policies can be scheduled to run at a certain time. During creation, all policy packages are given a default run schedule. This means that all applicable policies in this package run according to the default schedule. However, you can change the entire policy package schedule, or you can set a policy within the package to run at a different time from the rest of the package.
Recommended Reading
For more information see http://www.novell.com/documentation/zenworks7/dm7admin/data/a7j8m6g.html.
