security - Group Policy: Administrator Rights for Specific Users on Specific Computers

I'm a programmer stuck trying to administer an Active Directory setup for a small company. The Domain Controller is running Windows Small Business Server 2008.

We have a staff of field workers using tablet PC's; configuration problems with the tablet's ThinkVantage bloatware will require these users to have Administrator right when using the tablets. That's alright – it's useful for them to have broad privileges when I'm walking them through a fix over the phone, so I'm not looking for a work-around there.

I would like to use Group Policy to set up the following scenario: The users in a particular security group (or organization unit) should be in the BUILTIN/Administrators group when logged in to computers in a certain security group (or organization unit). It's okay if the computers have to be in an OU, but I'd prefer to assign users by group.

Of course, the field workers shouldn't be Administrators on other workstations, and vanilla office staff shouldn't be Admins on the tablets.

Currently, this is being managed locally on each tablet, but as we add new hires, it's becoming more of a hassle.

I feel like Restricted Groups is the answer here, but without a solid grounding in AD concepts and methods, I'm having a hard time making it happen.

What is the proper technique for this task, and how would I go about implementing it?

Answer

Create a group to encapsulate the users (Local-Admins-Tablets) and add them to this group

Create a sub-OU of the current workstations OU and put the tablets in here (Workstations\Tablets)

Create a GPO (Local-Admins-Tablets-Policy) and link it to the Workstations\Tablets OU

In the GPO, set the following:

• Comp Config - Policies - Windows Settings - Security Settings - Restricted Groups


• Right click, Add Group


• "Administrators", OK


• Members of this Group: myDomain\Local-Admins-Tablets

Reboot the PCs, and done.

Bear in mind that setting Restricted Groups will overwrite the machines existing list of local Administrators. If you have other users/groups in there already, you will need to add them to this policy too. Other examples would be myDomain\Domain Admins etc

EDIT: Oh, and change the filtering on the GPO and add Domain Computers. The easiest way to do this is to use the Group Policy Management MMC snapin (you can get this from the Remote Server Administration Tools from Microsoft)