Generating Configuration Settings

Figure 1–2 Merging

The configuration settings for a given entity are obtained by merging all the configuration policies that are applicable to that entity. This includes the configuration policies of the entity itself and those of its parent entities. For instance, the settings for a user take into account the policies assigned to that user and those assigned to the organizations that the user belongs to. The merging works by inheritance, that is, the user inherits the settings specified in the upper levels of the organization structure, and those settings can be modified at the user level by the policies assigned to the user. This process is illustrated in Figure 1–2, which shows how the settings of the "Marketing" organization are inherited by one of its members, user "jclarke" and how the policies of user "jclarke" override some of these inherited settings.

Figure 1–3 Protection

The overwriting of inherited settings by lower levels of the hierarchy can be prevented by protecting some of the elements of a policy. This allows the administrator to define mandatory settings which cannot be modified in subsequent policies or in the managed application running on the desktop. This process is illustrated in Figure 1–3, where a setting associated to the "Marketing" organization is protected, therefore forcing the merging to disregard the value specified in the policies of user "jclarke" and exposing a read-only value for use in the desktop application.

The settings obtained from the policies are integrated with the client application local configuration according to the following rule:

• Non-protected policy settings are used as defaults if no local user setting exists.

• Protected policy settings are enforced if no local mandatory setting exist.