04: What is the processing order of all policies and how are conflicts resolved (and how can I see the final RsOP) of those policies (between GPO, Cloud, XML, etc)?

When you attempt to deliver policies from multiple sources, for example Group Policy and PolicyPak Cloud everything is merely combined together for a final RSoP (resultant set of policy.)

Other sources are XML files placement; which happens automatically when you use:

1. PolicyPak Cloud or
2. PolicyPak with an MDM service and/or you use
3. PolicyPak Exporter utility to re-wrap XML files and deliver them via MSI.

Those policy XML files get unwrapped to c:\programData\PolicyPak\XMLData into various folders seen here: Cloud, Computer, Groups, Users.

Again the only time you have to really worry about conflicts is when you attempt to set the EXACT same value would you have a problem. For instance, you decide to create an RDP File on the desktop called RDP123.RDP .. and you use both Group Policy and PolicyPak Cloud at the same time, to make the exact same file, with different contents. This is ill-advised in the first place, but if you do, there is a precedence order.

You can think about the precedence order like a “weighted system” where some policies have higher weight than others.

One special case involves Microsoft Security Settings which are treated as a “block” and not as individual policies. As such you might see an undesired “flip flop” behavior when Microsoft Security Settings are delivered from multiple sources like Group Policy and PolicyPak Cloud. For details on this particular problem see this existing KB: https://kb.policypak.com/kb/article/908-why-do-i-sometimes-see-policypak-cloud-security-settings-and-sometimes-see-on-prem-gpo-security-settings/