Patent ID: 8689284

Claim:
A method of providing an IT policy to configure a plurality of devices associated with a group of users, the IT policy comprising a set of rules that dictate the functionality of the plurality of devices, the IT policy comprising IT policy data that is customizable on a per-user basis and the method being implemented by a processor, wherein the method comprises: checking, by the processor, for a change made to a global IT policy; noting a first group of users for which the change in the global IT policy applies; checking for at least one special user in the first group of users that has per-user IT policy rules; generating global IT policy data based on settings in a first data structure associated with global IT policy rules that are applicable to all users within the first group of users; generating per-user IT policy data based on settings in a second data structure associated with per-user IT policy rules that are applicable to the at least one special user; generating merged IT policy data for the at least one special user by merging the global IT policy data and the per-user IT policy data for the at least one special user; sending the merged IT policy data to the at least one special user; receiving an acknowledgement from the device associated with the at least one special user within the group that received the merged IT policy data, wherein the acknowledgment confirms that the merged IT policy data is received and applied; and writing a status of the merged IT policy data to an IT policy table in a management database when the acknowledgement is received.