Groups are candidates or targets for policy deployment. You can create several different types of groups, depending on how you intend to use them. Groups can be formed by different means, and can come from different sources, such as an inventory, a query, or from an external source such as Active Directory. For more information, see Types of Groups.
All groups are created under the configuration's Group item.
Regardless of the type of group, groups fall into two main categories: Target Groups and Select Groups.
A Target Group is the set of computers to which entire policy trees are assigned.
A Select Group is a set of computers that are selected from the Target Group within a policy tree.
When you build your policy plans, a group (which selects a set of computers) is added to a SELECT folder within the policy plan, When the policy plan is eventually assigned to a Target Group, the sets of computers within the SELECT folder are selected from the set of computers in the Target Group.