How to Easily Remember Group Policy Object Processing And Precedence
This article is about the order of processing and precedence of the Group Policy Object (GPO).
There is a acronym used to remember the order of processing:
LSDOU – Local, Site, Domain, OU.
Local GPO
Site linked GPO
Domain linked GPO
Organizational Unit linked GPO
The rule of thumb with precedence for the LSDOU order of processing is that the last GPO applied takes precedence which will be the OU linked GPO. There are additional rules to consider such as when multiple GPOs are applied to an object (e.g. Domain), the GPO are process according to order from top to bottom (1 to …) and the top GPO takes precedence.
Inheriting Parent GPO
In some case there make be nested OUs or Parent and Child domains in which GPOs are inherited from the Parent automatically. The inherited GPOs has the least precedence by default on the child node which can be changed by rearranging the link order.
Enforcing GPO
The precedence of the GPO can change by Enforcing it which will allow it to move to the top (become number 1).