Any application or component can define a policy. The policy will appear in the administrator user interface, and information that the administrator sets about the policy will migrate to the local computer's registry. The application or component that defines a policy must check the registry appropriately to enforce its own policy.
Policy information is typically added to a local registry in the following sequence:
1.Categories, policies, and parts are described in a template (.ADM) file. The .ADM file format is described in "Template File Format" later in this topic. An ADMIN.ADM file with all the policies that the system supports is shipped with Windows 95. Developers, however, may also provide their own template files.
2.The administrator runs the policy editor, which reads one or more policies and lists the available categories and policies. The administrator sets up the desired policies, and the policy editor uses registry functions to save the work to a policy (.POL) file. The format of policy files is described in "Policy File Format" later in this topic.
3.After the user logs on (and user profiles are reconciled if they are enabled), the policy downloader is activated. It determines where to find the file on the network, opens the policy file, and merges the appropriate computer, user, and user group policies into the local registry.