There are certain critical pieces of information for any job that are simply "need to know." When discussing Active Directory Group Policy administration, this chapter is that essential material. Remember, not everyone who handles Group Policy has the advantage of having been the original instigator of the domain at their companies. In fact, I would say the vast majority of IT administrators have come into their roles within an organization long after Active Directory, and therefore Group Policy was already established. In this sense, understanding the basic core capabilities of Group Policy and its behavior could turn out to be completely necessary as you jump into an environment that is already established and running in production, but is completely new to you. You are now equipped to start working with Group Policy, and even able to set it up from scratch in the future, should the need ever arise.
In Chapter 2, Group Policy Management Console (GPMC), we will take a closer look at the GPMC, the primary tool you will be interfacing with to create, modify, and control Group Policy.