Windows Group Policy

Table of Contents

Note:

Unfortunately, due to the wide variety of different setups and security policies, we cannot support the deployment of AnyDesk clients using the Windows Group Policy Management Tool. For questions regarding deployment, please reach out to your system administrator regarding the deployment of third-party MSI packages.

By using Group Policies, the settings for all AnyDesk clients in a domain can be adjusted, deployed, and managed from a central location.

In general, all settings found in Custom Client – Advanced Options can be adjusted.

Caution:

Changing the configuration of actively running AnyDesk clients requires a client restart for the changes to take effect.

The general rule-of-thumb is if it is a setting that requires you to “Unlock XXXXX settings…” to change in the AnyDesk client, then restarting the AnyDesk Service is required. This is most easily achieved by simply restarting the computer or right-clicking AnyDesk in the Windows System Tray and quitting AnyDesk.

On the other hand, if the settings can be changed without administrative credentials, simply closing all open AnyDesk windows and starting it again will activate the changes on the client.

AnyDesk 6 for Windows

Documentation for how to configure the Group Policy templates to work with your custom clients, set up secondary passwords, as well as the base Group Policy templates can be found in the Files tab of your customer portal.

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AnyDesk 7+ for Windows

Due to the introduction of the Permission Profiles feature with AnyDesk 7, the secondary password feature found in original Group Policy templates do not work with AnyDesk 7 clients.

With AnyDesk 7, the Group Policy templates also no longer need to be downloaded from your customer portal and then manually configured with your unique prefix. Rather, they can be directly generated using an AnyDesk 7 custom client and the Windows Command Prompt.

To do so simply:

1. Download a custom AnyDesk 7 or later Windows EXE client from your customer portal.
   This EXE client is only used to generate the Group Policy templates. Using these templates, administrators can configure both standard and custom EXE and MSI clients.
2. In the Windows Command Prompt, navigate to the download location of the custom AnyDesk client
3. Run the following command:
   <name_of_custom_AnyDesk_client>.exe –generate-gpt

Afterward, a set of Group Policy ADML and ADMX files that is compatible with our Permission Profile feature will be generated that work with both standard clients from our website as well as custom clients from your customer portal.

For instructions on where to place the generated ADMX and ADML files, please contact your IT or system administrator.

Warning:

The Features.Connect and Features.Accept keys do not currently work for custom clients.

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Use Cases

Some example use cases for using the Windows Group Policy Management tool in combination with AnyDesk:

• Set up multiple passwords for Unattended Access and bind each of them to different permissions. See the Secondary Password documentation in the Files tab of your customer portal.
  • Give full access to administrators and limit permissions for guests, e.g. for presentations.
• Disallow incoming/outgoing sessions.
• Change settings for all deployed devices in the same device at once.
• Edit a non-preset access control list

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