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Administrative Templates (ADMX)

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IT Administrators in organizations may want to control certain aspects of Visual Studio behavior to achieve consistency, compliance, or compatibility across their client machines. An easy way to accomplish this level of control is to configure and then deploy group policy settings to the client machines. The Visual Studio policies are consolidated in the Visual Studio ADMX Template into different categories, making them easily understandable and discoverable.

The recommended approach to discover and configure Visual Studio policies across your organization is to use the Microsoft Intune settings catalog. Alternative approaches are described below.

The Visual Studio group policy settings contained in the ADMX file are machine-wide for all users, meaning they intend to cover all applicable installed instances, versions, and SKUs of Visual Studio. Sometimes a policy is particular to a specific version of Visual Studio, and the template clearly calls this out.

Visual Studio policy categories

There are five main categories of Visual Studio policies that are included in the Visual Studio Administrative Templates (ADMX):

Acquiring the Visual Studio Administrative Template (ADMX)

The Visual Studio Administrative Template (ADMX) can be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center. The default installation path is C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions, a location that makes them instantly visible to the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.exe) tool, but you can install them anywhere. The templates are updated periodically, so if you use them we recommend that you check back periodically to get the latest updates.

Deploying the policies

For cloud connected environments that are managed by Microsoft Intune, you have two choices for how to configure and deploy Visual Studio policies.

  1. You can access Visual Studio policies through the settings catalog.
  2. You can also import the Visual Studio Administrative Templates (ADMX) into your Devices > Configuration profiles, and then create a customized Configuration profile based on the imported ADMX files. The Visual Studio Administrative Templates (ADMX) depend on the Windows administrative template (Windows.admx), so make sure you manually import that one in too.

For machines within a corporate network, you can use the Group Policy editor or Microsoft Endpoint Manager (SCCM) to deploy Visual Studio policies.

Support or troubleshooting

Sometimes, things can go wrong. If your Visual Studio installation fails, see Troubleshoot Visual Studio installation and upgrade issues for step-by-step guidance.

Here are a few more support options:

  • We offer an installation chat (English only) support option for installation-related issues.
  • Report product issues to us via the Report a Problem tool that appears both in the Visual Studio Installer and in the Visual Studio IDE. If you're an IT Administrator and don't have Visual Studio installed, you can submit IT Admin feedback here.
  • Suggest a feature, track product issues, and find answers in the Visual Studio Developer Community.

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